Preamble

The House met at Half past Two o'Clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Considered: to be read the Third time Tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE

Merchandise Marks (Trade Descriptions)

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade what reply he has sent to the letter recently received from the Principal of the Leathersellers' College admitting that he had made a mistake and that the gauntlets of the gloves submitted to him by his Department for expert examination were of sheepskin and not of hide.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Henry Strauss): The letter has been acknowledged.

Miss Burton: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that the industry concerned is watching this matter with very great interest? Is he now informing the House that it is still the considered opinion of his Department that where gloves are advertised as being made wholly of hide, and where the experts of the industry and the experts of the Government agree that the gauntlets are made of sheepskin, there is no material false description?

Mr. Strauss: On the particular case and on the desirability of prosecution I have nothing to add to previous answers, the last of which was given on 17th June.

Miss Burton: Is the Parliamentary Secretary telling the House that, under the Merchandise Marks Act as it is at present, it is not a false description to misdescribe the quality of goods?

Mr. Strauss: I am not saying anything of the kind.

Mr. Hale: Is this not a clear case of Doctor Sheepskin and Mr. Hyde?

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has now reached a decision concerning the initiation of a prosecution against the manufacturers of Argyll double knitting wool labelled as containing wool and nylon.

Mr. H. Strauss: Yes, Sir. The Board of Trade have commenced proceedings in this case.

Miss Burton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the Merchandise Marks Acts have now been shown to be inadequate for the initiation of prosecutions in so far as false trade descriptions are concerned; and whether he will consider such amendment as may be necessary.

Mr. H. Strauss: The answer to the first part of the Question is "No, Sir." The second part therefore does not arise.

Miss Burton: Is the Parliamentary Secretary prepared to consider receiving a deputation from the trade associations if they consider that such amendment is necessary?

Mr. Strauss: I shall certainly consider any request made to me by any hon. Member on the subject of a deputation, but I would not like to commit myself until I have seen the request.

Mr. Hale: asked the President of the Board of Trade how many prosecutions for offences against the Merchandise Marks Acts have been brought by his Department in the last 12 months to the most recent convenient date: and with what result.

Mr. H. Strauss: Three, Sir, in the year ending 5th July, 1954. One case now awaits trial. Convictions were obtained in the other two.

Mr. Hale: Is not this a case of the Board being in labour and producing a splinter? Would the Minister consider


the wholly unsatisfactory situation arising from the administration of this Act, which means that the Board of Trade lays down the standard, the Board of Trade has to decide whether the standard has been infringed and the Board of Trade brings the case? Would it not be better to hand this matter over to the Director of Public Prosecutions and have an independent public investigation of the many cases which are being brought of breaches of this Act?

Mr. Strauss: The hon. Member is wrong in his facts. Anyone can prosecute under the Act. As regards his implication that there are fewer prosecutions under the present Administration, I may point out that there were only two in the whole period of office of the late Government.

East-West Trade (Strategic Controls)

Mr. Swingler: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to be in a position to make a statement on the negotiations for a major relaxation of strategic controls on East-West trade.

Mr. Dodds: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he can yet make a statement on the relaxation of restrictions on East-West trade.

Mr. Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to make a statement about the changes to be made in the strategic controls on exports to Eastern Europe following the meetings of the Consultative Committee in Paris.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. Heathcoat Amory): Not yet, Sir.

Mr. Swingler: As the three months' period in which we were promised a statement is now up, might the House now be informed what special obstacles there are to getting agreement about this matter? Will the Minister now declare what his policy is?

Mr. Amory: These discussions are taking rather longer than we had hoped when we started, and no one is sorrier about that than we are. I assure the hon. Gentleman that any delay is certainly not due to inertia or lack of energy on the part of Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Wilson: Since Question No. 19 was put down before it was known that the President of the Board of Trade was going to America, will the Minister of State communicate with his right hon. Friend and say—and I am sure that he will be speaking for both sides of this House—that there is a widespread view in this country that these discussions should now be confined to restricting genuine munitions and items closely connected with munitions and should not be related, as the Americans want to relate them, to imposing an economic stranglehold on the Soviet Union?

Mr. Amory: I think that the right hon. Gentleman knows the policy of the Government, and that we are endeavouring to bring about a substantial shortening of the list.

Mr. Dodds: In view of the many authoritative statements that other European countries are sending goods to Russia which are forbidden to this country, will the Minister tell us what inquiries he has made into these disturbing reports, and with what results?

Mr. Amory: I should be glad, if the hon. Gentleman knows of such cases, if he would let me know. Any representations that have been made to us have been looked into, with the result, as I said the other day in the House, that we had no evidence that that was happening.

Mr. Wilson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that I have been myself informed by the Russian authorities that we are virtually the only country that is honouring this list and that it is perfectly simple to get these goods from other countries? Is he aware that the Soviet Minister for Foreign Trade has said in the last few days—he actually said it to myself—that orders have been placed or arrangements had been made for buying at the official rates of exchange £100 million of goods from this country, if the licences were forthcoming?

Mr. Amory: I was not aware of either of those points that the right hon. Gentleman has made, but again, if he has any evidence, I should be glad if he would pass it on.

Sir H. Williams: May I ask whether ball-bearings and sparking plugs are included in the list?

Mr. Amory: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is speaking of controls on trade with Eastern Europe or with China—

Sir H. Williams: China.

Mr. Amory: On China the list of prohibited goods has been published. I am afraid I have not all the details.

Mr. Bottomley: Can the Minister assure the House that the President of the Board of Trade, in his mission to the United States, is not to by-pass the work of the Consultative Committee in Paris?

Mr. Amory: I am glad to give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance.

President of the Board of Trade (Canadian Visit)

Mr. Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on his recent visit to Canada, and the steps which he has taken to facilitate an expansion of trade between Canada and the United Kingdom.

Mr. Amory: My right hon. Friend regrets that, owing to his visit to Washington this week, he is unable to take this opportunity himself to say something to the House about his visit to Canada. My right hon. Friend, in his series of public speeches in Canada and in his many private discussions with representatives of the Canadian Government and Canadian industry, emphasised that United Kingdom purchases from the dollar countries in general, and from Canada in particular, will be able to increase if Canada buys more from the United Kingdom; and that the United Kingdom is now offering goods competitive in price, in quality, in delivery and in after-sales service, in nearly the entire range of Canadian imports. Everywhere my right hon. Friend found a desire on the part of Canadians to buy more from this country.

Mr. Holt: Can the Minister now give the percentage of liberalisation of trade with Canada?

Mr. Amory: No, I cannot. I think that I said to the hon. Gentleman the other day that if he put down a Question to that effect I would try to give him the information for which he asked.

Departmental Functions (Transfer)

Mr. Pannell: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will make a statement on the reorganisation of his Department which will become necessary on the transfer to him of functions hitherto performed by the Ministry of Supply; what consultations he is having with the Minister of Supply to enable staff from that Department to be transferred; and what estimate he has made of the additional number required.

Mr. Amory: I am afraid I cannot add to the reply which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply gave the hon. Gentleman yesterday.

Mr. Pannell: Is the right hon. Gentleman sure that he cannot add anything to that? The staff in the Department are fully seized that changes are in progress at the present time and have expressed some alarm. They want to know whether the Minister can give an assurance that when work is transferred the staff engaged on that work will accompany it. Can the right hon. Gentleman at least say that if there is any proposed transfer at all the staff will be adequately consulted?

Mr. Amory: The question which the hon. Member has raised as to the effect of any such change on staff is obviously important. I should like to repeat that no decision has yet been reached. If and when a decision is reached, I have no doubt whatever that proper consultations will take place.

Mr. W. R. Williams: Will the Minister make quite sure that before final decisions are taken there will be this staff consultation to which he has referred?

Mr. Amory: I am quite sure that the proper treatment of staff will be taken into consideration before a decision is reached.

Glove Industry, Leicester

Mr. Janner: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that there are now machines standing idle in the glove factories of Leicester as the result of competition from Hong Kong; and what steps he is now prepared to take to enable the glove industry to continue in Leicester and elsewhere.

Mr. Amory: I am aware that some glove knitting machinery in Leicester is at


present standing idle, but I do not know how much of this is due to competition from Hong Kong. I have no reason to suppose that the existence of the glove industry is seriously threatened.

Mr. Janner: Will the Minister make further inquiries about this? Is he aware that in Hong Kong the workers are receiving about one-eighth of what the workers in Leicester get? Further, is he aware that these gloves are being imported now at about 20s. a dozen whereas they were 36s. a dozen in 1953? Is he also aware that the trade in Leicester is very deeply concerned about this and that quite a number of people have had to go to other employment?

Mr. Amory: I should be very interested in any evidence that can be sent to me either by the hon. Member or by the trade, but I would remind the hon. Gentleman that Hong Kong is a Colony within the Commonwealth and I really cannot hold out any hopes that it will be possible to put restrictions on imports from Hong Kong.

Mr. Colegate: Would the Minister say whether he is of the opinion that, with the liberalisation of East-West trade, there will not be still stronger competition with this country?

Mr. Amory: I think that we must wait and see how the situation develops.

British Lion Film Corporation

Mr. Swingler: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps have now been taken to maintain the level of film production after the middle of August in the light of the decision of the National Film Finance Corporation to appoint a receiver for the British Lion Film Corporation.

Mr. H. Strauss: The receiver and manager is providing distribution guarantees pending the formation of the new company which, as already announced, will continue the distribution functions hitherto performed by the British Lion Film Corporation.

Mr. Swingler: What about production? Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that his assurances about the maintenance of film production have already been falsified, because films have been cancelled?

What are the Government doing to maintain film production there, and what is to happen when the present production programme expires?

Mr. Strauss: I am informed that the receiver decided not to proceed in one case, but that was due to factors which might in any event have deferred production of the film concerned.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the Parliamentary Secretary now in a position—because this is getting very urgent—to say whether the new company being established, or the receiver in the interim, is in a position to finance production as apart from the provision of distribution guarantees?

Mr. Strauss: No. I cannot add to my answer. I think that, as far as the effect of the appointment of the receiver and manager is concerned, the steps he is taking should prevent any loss of production.

Polish Bilberries

Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will arrange henceforward to allow free competition in the importing of Polish bilberries.

Mr. Amory: Negotiations with Poland for a Trade and Financial Agreement for 1954 and subsequent years are still not complete, and I cannot therefore say what final arrangements will be possible for the import of bilberries.

Savoy Hotel Limited (Report)

Mr. E. Fletcher: asked the President of the Board of Trade what steps he proposes to take in view of the report of Mr. E. Milner Holland on his investigation into the affairs of the Savoy Hotel Limited.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) whether, in view of the Report of the investigation conducted by Mr. Milner Holland, he proposes to take any action against the directors of the Savoy Hotel Company;
(2) how he proposes to ensure that directors of public companies do not in future make an invalid use of the powers of management conferred upon them.

Mr. H. Strauss: My right hon. Friend would like to take this opportunity of


thanking Mr. Milner Holland for his admirably clear Report. The House will agree that it deals most fully with the issues placed before him. Since the Report states that the directors acted in good faith, my right hon. Friend does not propose to take any action against them. Mr. Milner Holland, after careful consideration, has expressed the view that their use of their powers was invalid. My right hon. Friend has no reason to apprehend that, in the face of this opinion, other directors will seek to carry out any similar transaction, but, if they did, it should be possible to get a decision from the courts. As at present advised, my right hon. Friend does not consider that any amendment of the Companies Act is required, but he is keeping the matter under consideration.

Mr. Fletcher: Is the Minister aware that it is difficult to regard this Report as very satisfactory? It does not reflect much credit upon the directors, it gives no comfort to the shareholders, and leaves the law on the subject in a very uncertain and unsatisfactory condition.

Mr. Strauss: If the hon. Member examines the very clear conclusions, I think he will find that the Report elucidates the matter very much. I think that it clarifies the law, as far as the law can be clarified without a judicial decision.

Mr. Jenkins: As the Parliamentary Secretary says that the Report is completely clear, will he tell us what, in the view of his Department, "invalid" means, since I understand the normal meaning of the word to be "not being in force, ineffective"? Clearly it was most effective, whatever else it was. Secondly, will the hon. and learned Gentleman take into account that there have been grave expressions of concern about the uncertainty of company law both here and in a leading article in "The Times"? Does he not really think that he ought to clear the matter up either by a test case or by amendment?

Mr. Strauss: I appreciate that until there is a decision by the courts there must be an element of uncertainty, but, in view of this closely reasoned Report, I think there is no reason to apprehend other directors taking similar action. If they did, I think it extremely probable that the matter would be tested in the courts. On the first part of the hon. Member's

supplementary, I am not going to attempt to improve on the language of the distinguished lawyer concerned.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Why should it be left to litigation to decide an important point of this kind when it can be simply and effectively disposed of by legislation which would clarify the matter without any doubt?

Mr. Strauss: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman tried to draft the legislation, he would find that it was by no means so simple.

Mr. Snow: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will introduce legislation to make obligatory the publication of the identity of the individuals or corporation responsible for guaranteeing the purchase of stock at prices considered by the appropriate authority to indicate abnormal circumstances.

Mr. H. Strauss: No, Sir.

Mr. Snow: How can the hon. and learned Gentleman and his Department regard with equanimity the purchase of stock by individuals or corporations at the price of 62s. 6d. when the current price of the same stock is 39s. 3d.? Does not he know who guaranteed this purchase? Is it not a fact that it was Barclays Bank? Is the public interest well served by this sort of anonymity?

Mr. Strauss: I was not quite certain what the hon. Member had in mind in asking this Question.

Sir H. Williams: Neither have I.

Mr. Strauss: If he is referring to what might have been material in the inquiry which was recently conducted into the affairs of the Savoy Hotel, it would have been open to the Inspector to look into this matter, had he thought it relevant. If the hon. Member desires to ask any Question about the borrowing of money or other financial assistance in this case, that Question should be addressed to the Treasury.

Mr. Snow: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he proposes to introduce legislation to make it an offence for secretaries of companies to publish as unanimous decisions of boards of directors, unless it is demonstrable that all directors, notifiable under the


articles of the company, had in fact been notified of the time and place of the meeting where such decisions were taken.

Mr. H. Strauss: No, Sir. I do not think that such legislation is necessary.

Mr. Snow: Is it not a fact that at least one director of the Savoy Group—and probably two—was not informed of the Hoard meeting, that decisions were taken which should properly have been considered by the board and the shareholders as a whole, and that had that action been taken this rather unsavoury business would have come to light and received publicity?

Mr. Strauss: In this case the Inspector has found that the mistake was not deliberate. If mistakes of this sort are not made innocently, the criminal law is not without resources as things are, and, in addition, those responsible might find themselves liable to civil proceedings.

Cinematograph Films Council (Mr. Eckman)

Mr. Wyatt: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the recent attack made by Mr. Sam Eckman, an American national, on the British film industry, he will not reappoint Mr. Eckman to the Cinematograph Films Council.

Mr. H. Strauss: I cannot yet say who will be appointed to the Cinematograph Films Council when the terms of office of the present members expire, but my right hon. Friend would not regard a representative of one section of the film industry as unsuitable solely on the ground that he had criticised another section.

Mr. Wyatt: Is not the Minister aware that Mr. Eckman attacked the Eady Fund and said that the film industry ought not to contribute any more to it from the remission of taxation which they have recently been given; that he has come into full conflict with the British Film Producers' Association representing the producers, and that in any case he represents an American film company? Would it not be a good idea to have only British subjects on the British Film Council?

Mr. Strauss: I am aware that Mr. Eckman has published a controversial article on the merits of which I am

expressing no view whatever. I would, however, refer the hon. Member to Section 41 of the Cinematograph Films Act, 1938, from which it will be seen that it is the duty of my right hon. Friend to appoint representatives from various sections of the industry.

Sir H. Butcher: Has not the gentleman in question brought to his duties an expert knowledge of the film industry and a great friendship for this country?

Development Areas

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the President of the Board of Trade when he expects to lay a White Paper showing the action taken in Development Areas since 1948.

Mr. H. Strauss: There has been no decision to lay a White Paper on this subject, but my right hon. Friend is considering the matter.

Mr. Wilson: As the Minister has been considering the matter for two years now, will he bear in mind that, when the Distribution of Industry Act was passed in 1945, an undertaking was given to lay a White Paper in three years, which I did, and it was understood that there would be subsequent White Papers laid every three years thereafter?

Mr. Strauss: I do not think that was quite the understanding, but let me say that I appreciate the very good reasons why the right hon. Gentleman laid the White Paper in 1948. If he will refer to the Foreword of that White Paper, he will see that the occasion for the laying of that White Paper was expressly said to be the statutory review under Section 7 of the Act three years after the Act came into operation. There has been no subsequent statutory review, nor will there be, under the Act.

Mr. Wilson: But if the first White Paper was laid only three years after the Act, is there not a case for another White Paper, as it is six years since the first White Paper was laid?

Mr. Strauss: That question presupposes a general merit in the laying of White Papers. There are many statutes which prescribe annual reports and so forth, but there is nothing like that in this case. Nevertheless, the right hon. Gentleman's desire for a White Paper has been noted and is under consideration.

North-Eastern Trading Estate (Factories)

Mr. F. Willey: asked the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made regarding the two North-Eastern Trading Estate Company's factories in Sunderland which are still vacant.

Mr. H. Strauss: A surrender of the lease of Price's Tailors Ltd. has now been arranged and we have recently brought the factory to the notice of several more possible tenants. Fordham and Co. Ltd. are themselves seeking a tenant for their factory, which we are also bringing to the notice of suitable applicants for factory space.

Mr. Willey: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that I am very glad that he has at last taken the advice which was previously tendered to him? Is he further aware that there is now a possibility of a third factory closing and that the special difficulties of Sunderland merit the particular attention of the Board of Trade?

Mr. Strauss: As to the special difficulties of Sunderland, I am sure the hon. Member will welcome the fact that the building of a new factory on the Pallion estate has started. But, on the problem generally, I am sure that he will better serve the interests which I believe he has in mind if he will have a talk with me on the whole matter.

Chemical Pulp

Mr. Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade, in view of the recent announcement of Messrs. Courtaulds Limited to build a new rayon staple fibre unit on the Humber to produce 100 million pounds weight annually, what assurances he has given to this firm that they will be granted import licences for the extra amount of chemical pulp that will be required; and what is the import duty on this raw material.

Mr. Amory: None, Sir; but I have no doubt that any application will be considered as sympathetically as our balance of payments position at the time permits. There is no duty on imports of wood pulp.

Mr. Holt: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will now lift all licensing restrictions on the importation of chemical pulp to the paper industry.

Mr. Amory: I regret that our balance of payments position does not yet allow us to dispense with the quantitative restrictions on imports of chemical or other types of pulp for paper making.

Carpets (Indian and Pakistani Tariffs)

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade the general level of tariffs for British manufactured carpets and rugs entering respectively, India and Pakistan; also the tariffs upon Indian and Pakistani manufactured carpets entering the United Kingdom; whether reciprocity exists; what representations he has received in this regard; and what action he is contemplating, or taking.

Mr. Amory: In India and Pakistan the duties on United Kingdom woollen carpets and rugs are 31¼ per cent, ad valorem and 45 per cent. ad valorem, respectively. No Customs duty is charged in the United Kingdom on Indian and Pakistani carpets except on those containing silk. My right hon. Friend has received no recent representations from the industry and has no action in mind at present.

Mr. Nabarro: My right hon. Friend said a couple of weeks ago that conversations were being considered with the Indian Government about the inequalities which exist upon tariffs in the textile industry. When those conversations are conducted, will my right hon. Friend have special regard to the manifest inequality which exists in the case of carpets, which so seriously affects the industry in Kidderminster?

Mr. Amory: I do not think that I said the other day quite what my hon. Friend says I said. As to the position generally, we must remember that these tariffs are the result of trade agreements made with India in 1939 and with Pakistan in 1951, and it is right that we should consider the results of such trade agreements as a whole, and not one individual item.

Mr. Bottomley: Is it not a fact that both those agreements are favourable to


the United Kingdom, and, in those circumstances, should we not be very careful before we consider taking further action?

Mr. Amory: I agree, in general, with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. I believe that both agreements are pretty favourable to this country.

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Will my right hon. Friend consider the question of jute carpets which are in a particularly difficult position? Could they not be put in the same category as hessian in the matter of protection?

Mr. Amory: I will consider what my hon. and gallant Friend has said. I am afraid that I cannot give him an answer now. I am not quite familiar with that point.

Subsidised Horticultural Imports

Mr. Nabarro: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that the policy of Her Majesty's Government in increasing tariffs in December, 1953, and May, 1954, upon fruit and other horticultural products is being negatived by increases in export subsidies by the foreign countries of origin of horticultural products; and what further action he is now taking to protect the home horticultural producer.

Mr. Amory: As I told my hon. Friend on 29th June, we are aware that there are elements of export subsidy in a number of horticultural imports into this country. I have received no evidence, however, that the increased tariffs recently introduced for certain horticultural produce have been negatived by increased export subsidies in foreign supplying countries. If my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind, perhaps he will let me know.

Mr. Nabarro: Is it not a fact that the export subsidies to which my right hon. Friend referred are, in themselves, a contravention of G.A.T.T. and, as the United Kingdom is a contributor to G.A.T.T., what action does my right hon. Friend propose to take to see that the other contributors abide by the terms of that agreement?—unless he is prepared to scrap the agreement altogether, which many of us believe ought to be done.

Mr. Amory: I did say that it is an over-simplification to assert that all export subsidies are against the provisions of G.A.T.T. It depends on the particular export subsidy. I have said that the Government do not like export subsidies and, when G.A.T.T. comes up for review, no doubt that will be one of the questions which will be considered.

Mr. H. Wilson: Whether or not the Government like these subsidies, is not the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) right when he says that if export subsidies are not applied equally to home consumption in these countries they are a direct contravention of G.A.T.T.? In those circumstances, without waiting for a review of G.A.T.T., will not the right hon. Gentleman enter into discussions with those countries in order to find out whether they are acting in breach of the Agreement?

Mr. Amory: These G.A.T.T. matters are extremely complicated, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, but where we have a clear case of a provision of G.A.T.T. not being adhered to we consider what steps we can usefully take.

Mr. Beresford Craddock: Is it not a fact that we are unable to take any effective measures against this sort of thing so long as the restrictive clauses in G.A.T.T. continue to operate?

Mrs. Mann: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the price of fruit and vegetables this year is higher than ever and is becoming absolutely prohibitive to the housewife? Will he say when all this plotting is going to cease, and when some help is going to be extended to the housewife?

Mr. Amory: That question falls outside the scope of the Question on the Order Paper.

Whisky Industry

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will request the Monopolies Commission to investigate and report on the whisky industry in view of the fact that one group of distillers provide more than one-third of the total output of whisky for this country.

Mr. H. Strauss: My right hon. Friend will bear this in mind when he selects further matters for reference to the Monopolies Commission.

Mr. Hughes: Can the hon. and learned Gentleman give an assurance that this matter will not be subject to the censorship of the 1922 Committee?

Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Can my hon. and learned Friend explain how a group which controls only one-third of the output of the industry can possibly be considered to be a monopoly?

Mr. Strauss: That, curiously enough, is possible under the Statute.

Mr. Stokes: Assuming the Minister's decision to be favourable, namely, that this matter will be investigated by the Monopolies Commission, whatever may be the facts with regard to the home trade, will he bear in mind the fact that export whisky, especially to dollar areas, is virtually a monopoly and that, as a consequence, the Americans pay only one dollar 10 cents now as compared with one dollar before the war? That is about 8s. Is it not time that this matter was put right and the distillers put in order?

Mr. Strauss: That is a little wide of the Question, but, if the matter does go to the Monopolies Commission, that Commission can hardly remain ignorant of the views of the right hon. Gentleman.

Motor Car Distribution Costs

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, through the Monopolies Commission or otherwise, he will inquire into the costs and methods of motor car distribution.

Mr. H. Strauss: No, Sir. My right hon. Friend prefers to await the outcome of the general inquiry under Section 15 of the Monopolies Act, on which the Commission is now engaged.

Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is not the public being fleeced by the exorbitant distribution margin of 20 per cent. on the price of cars? Is it not time that the Minister did something about distributors' and dealers' profits and inquired what is being done to earn them?

Mr. Strauss: Since many of the matters connected with the industry are covered by the inquiry which is now taking place, it would be desirable to await the result of that inquiry before making another into this trade.

China and Soviet Union (Export Restrictions)

Mr. Wigg: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether, in view of the cessation of hostilities in Korea, he will restrict the list of commodities prohibited for export to China to the categories indicated in the United Nations resolution of May, 1951.

Mr. Amory: The list is already restricted to these categories.

Mr. Wigg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that German trade is going ahead by leaps and bounds? In 1953 it was nine times what it was in 1952. Now that the Korean war is over, why do we continue to hamstring ourselves in the face of intense German competition?

Mr. Amory: I have no reason to suppose that the Germans are not adhering to the list which has been agreed in accordance with the United Nations resolution of 1951 about trade with China.

Mr. Wigg: Will the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to give an undertaking to inquire what is happening about German export trade to China? If we are not careful we shall wake up to find ourselves in a hopeless position.

Mr. Amory: I shall certainly look into the matter.

Mr. H. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a number of so-called strategic items which cannot be shipped to China are being shipped to Poland and other East European countries, and that railway and other transport facilities enable them to be shipped straight to China? Does not this fact make a farce of the whole system of special Chinese strategic controls?

Mr. Amory: We are aware that the embargo lists in the case of Eastern Europe and China are different.

Mr. Wigg: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will now permit the export of tinplate to China.

Mr. Amory: Any relaxation of the controls on exports to China must depend on developments in the Far East. The export of tinplate is already permitted if it is for the packing of food to be shipped to the United Kingdom.

Mr. Wigg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that very considerable orders are available to British firms which, if we do not accept them, will go to Continental competitors? What is he going to do about it?

Mr. Amory: I cannot accept the assumption made by the hon. Member.

Mr. Bing: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is no restriction whatever upon the export to China of tinplate, among other things, from Switzerland or Sweden, and that Swiss trade with China is now twice as great as British trade?

Mr. Amory: I am aware that neither of those countries is a member of the Consultative Group.

Mr. Wigg: If the right hon. Gentleman's policy is preventing British exports from going to China and she is getting the goods from somewhere else, what is the object of it? It is lunacy.

Mr. Amory: As I have said on several previous occasions, I am always glad to receive any evidence from any hon. Member on this subject. Many allegations are made but very little evidence comes to us.

Mr. Swingler: What is done about this evidence? How many cases is it necessary to send to the Board of Trade? I have sent cases, but nothing has been done about them.

Mr. Amory: Will the hon. Member send the cases straight to me in future? If he will do that I shall consider them personally.

The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. Wigg: To ask the President of the Board of Trade why the export to China of small generators for mobile cinema units has been banned on strategic grounds.

Sir L. Plummer: To ask the President of the Board of Trade why the export to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of extruded plastic tubing is prohibited.

Sir L. Plummer: To ask the President of the Board of Trade why the export from the United Kingdom to China of acetic acid and acetone is prohibited.

Mr. Wyatt: To ask the President of the Board of Trade what are the strategic considerations which have impelled him to restrict the export of generators to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Mr. Delargy: To ask the President of the Board of Trade why the export of light industrial motor-trucks to China is prohibited by his Department, but the export of saloon cars permitted.

Mr. Harold Davies: To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he will state the principle upon which the export of small fishing craft to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is permitted and to China is prohibited.

Mr. Amory: With the hon. Members' permission, I will answer these Questions together.

Mr. Wyatt: On a point of order. I do not give the right hon. Member permission to answer my Question No. 44 with Question No. 33, which is quite a different one.

Mr. Speaker: We can tell whether the answer will or will not cover both Questions only when we hear it.

Mr. Wigg: With respect, Mr. Speaker, the Minister asked for permission, and I certainly want my Question answered separately.

Mr. Speaker: It will be a waste of the time of the House if the same answer is given twice.

Mr. Hale: One Question deals with China and one with the U.S.S.R. Is it within the competence of the right hon. Gentleman to say, "I shall put the whole world together and answer 45 Questions at the same time"?

Mr. Speaker: We must wait until we have heard the answer.

Mr. Amory: The answer to these Questions is as follows:
The House is aware that the controls on exports to the U.S.S.R. are at present being reviewed. It would be inopportune to discuss particular items at this stage. In the case of China, our controls are more stringent, because China has been engaged in hostilities against the United Nations forces. The items prohibited for export to China, including those mentioned, could be put to military uses. Any


general relaxation of the China controls must depend upon developments in the Far East.

Mr. Wigg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that my Question has nothing whatever to do with the U.S.S.R.? It is about small generators for mobile cinemas, small generators that can be used only for mobile cinemas and nothing else. If the right hon. Gentleman wants it, I can supply him with evidence to that effect from the firm of manufacturers. Will he be kind enough to answer just that Question?

Mr. Amory: The decision on the embargo of small generators to China was reached as a result of discussions between all the countries concerned. On interpretation of the United Nations resolution, in the opinion of those countries, small generators are of military value.

Mr. Erroll: Is it not very interesting that while generators are being ordered no cinema units are being ordered? Does that not throw doubt on the veracity of the orderers?

Mr. Wigg: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the firm, which, incidentally, is not far from the constituency of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Erroll), has supplied full technical details to the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Supply, and that his technical advisers have accepted its evidence? If that is so, why is he denying permission to export these things?

Mr. Amory: I am afraid that there is no question whatever of our unilaterally altering the China list.

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Wyatt: Would the right hon. Gentleman now answer Question No. 44, which he has not dealt with in his reply? He has said that as far as China is concerned there are military considerations. Why, then, does he allow the export of generators to Russia? Since he does, will he tell us why he does not allow more to go?

Mr. Amory: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I have given. I have said that discussions are proceeding, and it would be inopportune, in my opinion, to discuss particular items on the list.

Mr. H. Morrison: Could the Minister help the House to this extent? My hon. Friend's Question No. 33 refers to small generators for mobile cinema units. There is a dispute about the facts. Could the Minister give an illustration of the military purposes for which these small generators could be used?

Mr. Amory: I am no engineering expert, but I really should not find it difficult to believe that small generators that can be removed from one equipment and put into another could be items of considerable military value.

Sir L. Plummer: Is the Minister aware that while we are refusing permission to export acetone and acetic acid, Western Germany is free to export such goods to China? Is he not further aware that we have no monopoly in the production of plastic materials? What is the reason for including plastic devices in the security list?

Mr. Amory: The answer to the hon. Gentleman is the same; the countries concerned have found that these items may be of military value.

Mr. Hale: Is it not the position that small generators can be exported to the U.S.S.R., and that the Russians, if they want to, can send them to China? If so, is not the whole thing nonsense? Are we really in the position, under a Government who were going to set businessmen free, that to exchange a tintack for an egg we have to consult Washington, Paris, Brussels and Bonn?

Mr. Amory: We really cannot think of a matter in which consultation seems to be more important.

Mr. Bottomley: Is it possible for the Minister to tell us why the proceedings of the Consultative Committee are continually held up? He has given me an assurance that it is not we who hold them up. Which Government is it?

Hon. Members: Answer.

Mr. Amory: I think that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen are not being suite reasonable about this matter. These discussions are between no fewer than 15 countries, and are about very difficult matters indeed, and I do not think it is surprising that they lasted a little longer than we expected when we started them.

Mr. Wigg: In view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is giving a different answer today from the answer given by his officials to the firm concerned to which I have referred, I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Sir L. Plummer: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will circulate to all manufacturers and exporters of plastics, a list of the plastic products whose export to Eastern Europe and to China, respectively, is prohibited.

Mr. Amory: I am sure that it will be much more useful that intending exporters should inquire of the Board of Trade whether their particular product may be exported.

Sir L. Plummer: Is the Minister aware that would-be exporters are getting conflicting advice when applying to the Board of Trade? Would it not be simpler to let every manufacturer know exactly where he stands?

Mr. Amory: I think I have said before that these inquiries are extremely difficult. No list will cover them completely. The most satisfactory way is to inquire into each case as it comes along and for the manufacturer to tell us exactly the specifications of what he wants to export. Then we can give him an answer. If the hon. Gentleman can give me any information about cases in which conflicting advice has been given, I shall be glad if he will let me have it.

Mr. Bing: asked the President of the Board of Trade the total number and value of orders for machine tools whose licensing for export to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is at present under consideration by his Department; and the number and value of those licences which were under consideration on 21st May, 1954, which have since been granted.

Mr. Amory: At present 150 applications for licences to the value of £26,726,685 are under consideration. Since 21st May, 16 licences have been issued to the value of £464,444. Applications for licences do not necessarily correspond to orders.

Mr. Bing: Does the right hon. Gentleman first of all realise that these applications for licences exceed the total in any one year of exports of machine tools to

the whole world, and, secondly, that those orders are now being supplied by Switzerland and Sweden who place no restrictions whatsoever on the export of machine tools to the Soviet Union? Does he not think this nonsense should be stopped?

Mr. Amory: With regard to the first part of the hon. and learned Gentleman's supplementary Question. I do agree that these are very important orders indeed. We do not want to keep them in suspense one day longer than we need.

Mr. Bing: Is the right hon. Gentleman not going to answer the other two parts of my supplementary question?

Mr. Amory: As regards the second part, relating to Switzerland and Sweden, I have no specific information of what the hon. and learned Gentleman states.

Mr. Bing: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a list of those commodities whose export to Eastern Europe and China is prohibited from the United Kingdom but is permitted from the British zone of Western Germany.

Mr. Amory: There is no difference between the list of prohibitions enforced by Her Majesty's Government and that enforced by the Federal German Government.

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Bing: But surely the Minister is aware that, if not from the British Zone, at least from the American Zone acetone and acetic acid, for example, are being exported every day to China, and that when the Minister was enforcing the ban on antibiotic drugs to China orders amounting to millions of pounds were fulfilled by Western Germany? I think photostat copies of the correspondence showing those orders were sent to the Board of Trade. Did he not trouble to look at them?

Mr. Amory: I have no evidence of any difference in treatment of exports from Western Germany as between the British Zone and the American Zone.

Mr. Rankin: Will the Minister tell us what he calls "evidence"?

Sir H. Williams: The hon. Member should look it up.

Mr. Hale: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that polyvinyl-chloride, used for the manufacture of all plastic materials, is being exported from Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia to Western Europe; and whether he will remove the prohibition on British firms exporting this product to Eastern Europe and to China.

Mr. Amory: Yes, Sir, the Soviet Zone of Germany and Czechoslovakia probably export this commodity to Western Europe. Equally there is no restriction in the United Kingdom on its exports to Eastern Europe. As regards China, there is no present intention of changing existing policy.

Mr. Hale: If there are no restrictions on the export of polyvinyl-chloride and its products, can the Minister explain why firms in Norfolk and elsewhere have been writing to his Department for some considerable time to try to get licences and to get information and have not been able to obtain this information? Is he aware that this is perhaps the predominant basic material of most plastic products and a matter of considerable importance?

Mr. Amory: As for the first part of the question, I was not aware that firms had been unable to obtain information; as for the second part, I agree that this is a basic material for plastics.

Mr. Hale: asked the President of the Board of Trade what quotas for the export of diesel generators of 750 kilowatts and above to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have been agreed upon by the Consultative Group Co-ordination Committee for export from the United Kingdom, France, Western Germany and Belgium, respectively.

Mr. Amory: As the hon. Member knows, it has not been the practice to make public information of this kind. I do not think the present moment a good one to consider a change in this policy.

Mr. Hale: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that on 5th July he told my hon. Friend the Member for Aston (Mr. Wyatt) that these figures had been arrived at by the agreement of the Consultative Group Coordination Committee as between the various nations concerned? Is it a fact that all the other Continental nations can

be told what the allocations are but that we cannot be told, and is there any reason on earth why we should not be told whether this country is being reasonably treated or unfairly treated in these discussions?

Mr. Amory: I do not think I can add anything to what I have said on this and several other occasions—I cannot think that this is a good moment to change our present policy.

Grapes (Import Licences)

Mr. Snow: asked the President of the Board of Trade the number and value of licences to import grapes from Bulgaria refused and granted, respectively, by his Department in the last 12 months to the nearest convenient date; and the number and value of licences to import this product from Spain refused and granted, respectively, during the same period.

Mr. Amory: No licences to import grapes from Bulgaria were issued in the last 12 months. In the first half of 1954, 97 licences to a value of £59,891 were issued for Spanish non-hothouse grapes. Details of refusals of licences are not readily available.

Mr. Snow: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why there is this attitude towards Bulgaria in view of the fact that we in this country have no particular cause to love Spain? Is it not a very good thing to try to engage in trade with such countries as Bulgaria, to create an atmosphere in which other settlements may be possible?

Mr. Amory: Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman in general that we want to engage in trade of that kind, but we are not yet in a position in which we can free grapes completely from import restrictions.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Review)

Mr. Dudley Williams: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) if, before seeking a revision of the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, he will discuss with Commonwealth Governments the effect on their exports to the United Kingdom of imports of fruit from the United States of America under the Mutual Security Act;
(2) if, in seeking a revision of the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, he will bear in mind the effect on the canning industry in the United Kingdom of imports of canned fruit salad from the United States of America under the Mutual Security Act; and what steps he will take to protect the industry.

Mr. N. Macpherson: asked the President of the Board of Trade (1) whether he will take steps, by negotiation, to bring into line United Kingdom and United States treatment of imports which receive a subsidy from the Government of the exporting country;
(2) whether, in the course of negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, he will make it clear to foreign countries that we will not allow dumping of their surpluses to prejudice established normal trade in Commonwealth products, and that he will take the necessary measures to prevent the dislocation of the home market and of Commonwealth trade by foreign dumping; and
(3) whether he is aware of the recent hardening of opinion in the Dominions, within the sterling area, in favour of the restoration of freedom in the use of preferential tariffs within the Commonwealth; and whether he will seek such freedom in the forthcoming negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in conjunction with the countries concerned.

Mr. Amory: Our objectives in the G.A.T.T. review will not be finally determined until after we have completed an examination of the provisions of the agreement which is currently in progress and until there has been full consultation with Commonwealth Governments on the lines agreed at the meeting of Commonwealth Finance Ministers in Sydney. The general issues raised in these Questions, including the use of export subsidies, will certainly be considered in the preliminary review, and, I should expect, in the consultations with Commonwealth Governments, and I will see that the points raised by my hon. Friends are borne in mind.

Mr. Williams: While I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply, may I ask him to give particular attention to the problems of Australia and South Africa in this connection, because very great concern is being felt in those Dominions?

Mr. Amory: I am sure that all those important matters will be taken into consideration.

Mr. Macpherson: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that he will not allow preferences to be frustrated by dumping or subsidies, that he will make this crystal clear at G.A.T.T. and that he will claim the same power to act independently and immediately as that which other Powers exercise?

Mr. Amory: I have already promised that the point raised by my hon. Friend will be borne in mind.

Mr. Bottomley: While recognising that it is in keeping with the policy of the late Government to consult the Commonwealth Governments before decisions are taken, will the Minister of State when at G.A.T.T. draw attention to the fact that the Mutual Security Act replaced Marshall Aid?

Mr. Amory: I will remember that point.

Tomato Imports

Mr. Delargy: asked the President of the Board of Trade what regulations there are discriminating against the import of tomatoes and tomato products from Europe into the United Kingdom, as between the various producing countries; in respect of what countries licences are normally granted; in respect of what countries licences are normally refused, and for what reasons; and, in particular, to what amount licences have been granted in the last 12 months, to the nearest convenient date, for the import of tomatoes and tomato products from Bulgaria, and to what amount they have been refused.

Mr. Amory: Fresh tomatoes and tomato products from Western Europe are admissible under open general licence. Specific licences for canned and bottled tomatoes are issued under a single quota covering imports from any of the countries in this group. As to Eastern Europe specific licences are required for the import of any of these goods. We are prepared to consider applications from any country for imports of tomato puree; the import of other products from particular countries are licensed in accordance with quotas established under trade agreements. No


licences for Bulgarian tomatoes and tomato products have been issued in the 12 months to the end of June and I regret that information about the refusals of licences is not available.

Mr. Delargy: Would the Minister inform the House how many applications for these imports he has received from Bulgaria during those 12 months?

Mr. Amory: No, I am afraid I cannot do that. I have said that none was given and I said in the answer that unfortunately we have no record of the number of refusals.

Mr. Delargy: Why?

Mr. Bing: Is the Minister's Department so ill-organised that it does not keep a record of the people who apply for licences? Would it not be quite simple to look through the applications and to see which were accepted and which were refused?

Mr. Amory: If we had to organise our work specifically in order to answer every conceivable question which could be asked we should have to have a staff two or three times as big as that which we have at present.

Non-Dollar Tobacco

Mr. Delargy: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will set up a working party to make recommendations as to the manner in which tobacco produced elsewhere than in the dollar area should be grown and cured so as to be suitable for manufacture in Britain and whether he will have discussions to this end with Commonwealth and colonial countries and with representatives of those growing tobacco in Bulgaria and China.

Mr. H. Strauss: No, Sir. The hon. Member is mistaken in thinking that the tobacco grown in Commonwealth and Colonial Territories is unsuitable for manufacture in Britain; a considerable proportion of the tobacco we use is drawn from non-dollar sources.

Mr. Delargy: The simple question was: Can we have some more?

Mr. Strauss: That was not the simple question. The simple question was whether we would set up a Committee.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTERS AND CIVIL SERVANTS (RELATIONSHIP)

Sir W. Smithers: asked the Prime Minister if, in view of the facts disclosed in the Crichel Down Report and of the amount of detailed work that has to be undertaken by Government Departments, he will set up a committee presided over by a prominent Queen's Counsel, whose meetings shall be held in public and at which evidence can be taken on oath, to examine and make recommendations as to the responsibilities of Ministers and their relations with their Civil Service advisers.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): I have been asked to reply.
No, Sir. The responsibilities of Ministers and their relations with civil servants will no doubt be referred to in the forthcoming debate on Sir Andrew Clarks' Report.

Sir W. Smithers: Will not my right hon. Friend ask the Prime Minister whether the Crichel Down case is not a typical example of the important principle, are we to be governed by popularly-elected representatives or by civil servants? Will he ask the Prime Minister when he intends to stop this progress down the totalitarian road? Will he ask the Prime Minister to remember his slogan—" Set the People Free."

Mr. Butler: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will remember his slogan, will reflect upon the success he has had in carrying it out, and will also reflect upon the competence of Her Majesty's Ministers to conduct their duties in a constitutional manner.

Mr. Attlee: Has a date been fixed for this debate? This is the second time that reference has been made to the fact that there will be a reply on these matters in debate, but we have no information about it and no firm promise whatever as to when this matter will be debated.

Mr. Butler: That is a question which should be addressed to the Leader of the House.

Mr. Attlee: Will the right hon. Gentleman take it up with the Leader of the House, because he is the second Minister who has made a statement of this kind without referring to the Leader of the


House at all—and the Leader of the House knew nothing about it when I questioned him.

Mr. Butler: The Leader of the House and I are in perfect harmony on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — THE PRIME MINISTER AND FOREIGN SECRETARY (VISIT TO U.S.A. AND CANADA)

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Prime Minister when he will be able to make a statement to the House in respect of the conversations held recently with President Eisenhower.

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement of the political subjects discussed and decisions reached during his conversations with United States and Canadian Ministers last week.

Mr. R. A. Butler: I have been asked to reply.
My right hon. Friend is aware of these Questions and he will no doubt have them in mind against his return.

Mr. Hughes: On a point of order. I expressly deferred Question No. 45 because I knew that the Prime Minister would not be here today. Is it in order for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to answer it?

Mr. Speaker: It is quite in order. I think that had the hon. and learned Member foreseen this he might have communicated the fact to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he did not intend to ask the Question.

Mr. Hughes: I had prepared to put the Question down tomorrow. Am I therefore precluded from having it taken tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker: If it has already been answered today, it would not be in order to ask it tomorrow.

Mr. Stokes: Surely if an hon. Member defers a Question it is not his responsibility to make the Department aware of the fact; it is the responsibility of the Table Office.

Mr. Speaker: That depends on when it is withdrawn. I could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman at all. The hon. and learned Member deferred his Question a very short time ago—while we were

sitting. In those circumstances it would be unreasonable to expect the Table Office to inform the Department.

Mr. Hughes: Surely the ordinary convention and practice of the House is that if one gives notice to the Table Office the Table Office informs the Department.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. and learned Member is mistaken about that.

Mr. Sorensen: Does the answer which the Chancellor gave mean that we can expect a fairly full statement by the Prime Minister at an early date? If so, will it be followed by debate?

Mr. Butler: Those are matters which must be decided by the Prime Minister on his return, which will be so soon that I think we might well leave them to his judgment. I have already taken the opportunity of informing the Prime Minister of these two Questions so that he may have them in mind in forming his judgment.

BILL PRESENTED

OVERSEAS RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT BILL

"to provide for the transfer to a statutory corporation constituted under the law of Tanganyika of the undertaking of the Overseas Food Corporation, and the dissolution of the last-mentioned Corporation; for the provision of funds under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940, in connection with the carrying on of the said undertaking; for the conclusion of fresh arrangements as to the obligations and rights of the last-mentioned Corporation in connection with the Southern Province port and railway; for the remission of interest on certain advances made under the Overseas Resources Development Act, 1948, to the Colonial Development Corporation; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. Lyttelton; supported by Mr. Boyd-Carpenter; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 139.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Resolved:
That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Crookshank.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[20TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Orders of the Day — CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1954–55

CLASS IX

VOTE 1. MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT AND CIVIL AVIATION

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That a sum, not exceeding £4,793,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1955, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, including the salaries and expenses of the Coastguard, the Transport and Transport Arbitration Tribunals, and the Air Transport Advisory Council, and sundry other services.—[£2,400,000 has been voted on account.]

Whereupon Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—[Mr. Buchan-Hepburn]—.put, and agreed to.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

ROAD HAULAGE (SALE OF ASSETS)

3.33 p.m.

Mr. James Callaghan: I beg to move,
That this House, in view of the facts disclosed in the First and Second Reports of the Road Haulage Disposal Board and of the continued financial and operating success of British Road Services, calls upon Her Majesty's Government to abandon further sales of the vehicles and premises under the Transport Act, 1953.
I suppose that there will be at least no difference between the two sides of the House that the Transport Act, 1953, was one of the brightest jewels in the Government's legislative crown of that Session. Equally, I suppose that there will be no difference between us that the core of that Act was the proposal of the Government to sell the nationalised lorries, of which there were at that time some 40,000, as quickly as possible. At least there will be no dispute among

most hon. Members that the intention was to sell them "rapidly." That was the word which the Minister used at the time, although I notice that recently he has been slightly more cautious in what he has said about the pace of the sale.
I do not think I need go into details to show that it was the considered view of the Government that this process of disposal of the lorries should have been concluded within a reasonable period of time. In one incautious sentence, the Minister of Transport committed himself to the statement that the whole of the lorries would have been sold by December, 1953. I hope that he is not going to deny that. He later corrected that, at a later stage of the Bill, when he said that perhaps that was rather optimistic—and it has proved so.
After that, in the light of the experience he had, he went on to make some more rather rash comments. One was made in his name by his former Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine), at a very appropriate function, the annual banquet of the road hauliers last November when he read a message from the Minister in which the Minister said that 10,000 lorries would have been sold by the end of April, and he hoped that a fairly high proportion of the whole would have been disposed of by the time the Disposal Board had reached its first birthday at the end of May. That was the Minister's view as recently as last November.
Now, after a great deal of shuffling and equivocation at Question time in the House, he has attempted to prove that when he had sold some 20 per cent. of the lorries, it meant in fact that he had sold 86 per cent. of them. We have the facts from the Road Haulage Disposal Board. The Board says that, in a period of 14 months, out of 36,000 lorries fewer than 6,000 have been sold. British Road Services are, in fact, still operating more than 30,000 lorries. The Board says—to put it another way—that the value of the assets accruing to the Minister to be sold is £63 million. The purchase price of those sold so far, according to an answer which the Minister gave us last week, is £7·4 million. If I may translate this into percentages, 12 per cent. of the assets by value have been sold in 14 months, and 20 per cent. of the lorries by number have been disposed of.
I do not know whether the Minister would care to say that he regards that as a fairly high proportion of the total number. I would not be surprised at anything which the Minister might say, but even he will find it a little difficult to persuade the House that that represents a fairly high proportion of the total number by the end of May. Certainly his expectations about most of them going quickly have long since whistled down the wind.
The plain truth is that these 6,000 lorries, which have been slowly and painfully disposed of, have been hawked round the country in one list after another. They have been offered and reoffered. The Disposal Board has now got to the stage when it has not only various lists but lists R1 and R2, which, I am told, mean "Rejected 1" and "Rejected 2." Some of the lorries among the 6,000 vehicles sold have been hawked round as many as two or three times and put up for sale in various combinations and conjunctions.
The truth is that the bids have been low and the number of vehicles sold few. That is in total contradistinction to the Minister's expectations and all the Government's forecasts when the Bill was being discussed in this House some 18 months ago. What is more, the 6,000 lorries have not been sold to former road hauliers who are now returning to the industry. This was the whole object of the exercise. We were told that the small hauliers were knocking on the door ready to return. What are the facts?
I want the Minister, if he will be good enough to do so, to tell the House how many lorries have been sold to new entrants. My information is that 80 per cent. of the 6,000 lorries which have been sold have been sold to people already in the business. Less than 20 per cent. of the lorries sold have been sold to small hauliers whose businesses were taken over, who were compensated and who have returned to the business. That means that one-fifth of these 6,000–1,200 lorries—is the maximum number, according to my information, of those which have gone to the small hauliers anxious and willing to return to the road haulage business.
I can tell the Minister in the jargon—perhaps the not very polite jargon of those

in the trade—what has been happening. The Disposal Board of the British Transport Commission has not been able to sell businesses to any large extent. It has been able to sell individual lorries in two's and three's, and sell them to existing hauliers, for this reason. I am afraid that it is the case that existing hauliers have been breaking the law by running over the 25-mile limit. That is the information which I have. Although, no doubt, the Minister's officers have done their best to stop it, it is well-known in the trade that this is being done.
It is known that this is happening and, in the jargon of the industry, all that these previous hauliers have been doing is buying a lorry or two in order to acquire A licences to "legitimise their babies." They have, in fact, been getting hold of one or two A licences so that if their fleet is found outside the 25-mile limit and they are challenged, they can say, "We have got a licence," and so they have been willing to buy one or two lorries from British Road Services. I challenge the Minister to give any other view than that if he thinks it is appropriate. I have used the phrase that is commonly used in the road haulage business at the present time, and I ask the Minister whether this is what he anticipated and what he led the House to believe would happen when we had our long discussions about denationalising this service.
The Road Haulage Association, of course, have been busy trying, as we knew all the time, to get good bargains at cheap prices. I think it will be a long time before we see a greater degree of effrontery than the sight of that organisation going to the Minister and asking him to agree that when three or more bids were put in for any particular unit, the highest should be accepted. What an opportunity for rigging the market that presented. It is what I should have expected, and the Minister, to do him justice, of course rejected that proposal. But this is typical of the approach of that organisation to this problem. It was because the Minister relied over-much on that organisation, to which he was so foolish as to listen throughout the whole of our discussions, that he is in the difficulty in which he finds himself today.
I can describe the Minister's difficulty in a sentence. He cannot sell the lorries, and he has no powers to permit


British Road Services to retain them. That is the dilemma in which he has placed himself by his over-confidence when the Transport Bill was going through the House. As far as I can see, no end to this process is in sight. Somebody said the other day that if the process continued at its present rate, it would take 15 years to sell off the lorries. Perhaps that is a little pessimistic—optimistic, perhaps, from our point of view; pessimistic from the Government's.
Does the Minister not realise the uncertainty into which he is plunging trade and industry and those who are relying upon British Road Services now to do their job? Does he not realise the uncertainty which the staff and the drivers are feeling about this situation? I know he has had letters about it, because I have had copies of some of them that have been sent to him, and I know of the representations that are made about the anxieties into which he is plunging a great many people because of his actions upon this matter.
There is a second complaint that I want to make about the Minister. I have already indicated that, despite his assurances to the House, he is not selling transport units as businesses in the way that he prophesied and forecast when the Bill was going through the House. This is what he said:
It is our intention to break up the Road Haulage Executive into units. Those units would represent as near as possible the pre-nationalisation pattern…It will be difficult and in many cases impossible to restore the pattern as a whole, but, by and large, the old pattern represented natural development and it is our hope to see that restored."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st May, 1952; Vol. 501, c. 492.]
That was the first thing that the Minister said.
Later, on 3rd December, 1952, the right hon. Gentleman said:
I am sure…that as soon as the House has made up its mind on the Bill…there will be no difficulty whatever in disposing of a very substantial number of these businesses…What we are offering for sale"—
I ask the House to note this—
are not ordinary single vehicles. They are businesses with business connections and many other assets, in a wholly different category from…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd December, 1952; Vol. 508, c. 1577.]
the sale of single vehicles.
Does the Minister really believe that he has carried out that intention? If so, let me quote from one of the most recent sales lists that was issued by the Transport Commission. Let us see how far businesses are being disposed of. I should like to go first to my own constituency, where there is a first-class depot which is being mauled and mangled through the Minister's Act.
In Cardiff—Ferry Road, Grangetown—there are, as the House can see from these lists in my possession, two pages of units. I should like to read out what constitutes a business. Here are the numbers of vehicles that are included. No stores, no buildings, no garage, no workshop—just vehicles, and nothing more. Here is the number they are selling which constitutes a business: one, five, five, four, one, three—and so it goes on. Are those businesses, or are they single vehicles?
One can turn to any page in the list and see that practically the same thing is happening. Look at London—Stratford. Remember what the Minister said—
What we are offering for sale are not ordinary single vehicles. They are businesses with business connections and many other assets, in a wholly different category…
from the sale of single vehicles. Listen to these numbers at Stratford. One, one, one, one, two, five, two, and so on. There are about half a dozen businesses in two pages of transport units. Is that what the House was led to expect would be done? The plain truth is that the Minister—

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: Has the hon. Member read Section 3 (3) of the Act?

Mr. Callaghan: I am sure that during our long debates I read it many times. I do not remember now what it was, but what is quite clear—

Mr. Wilson: Since the hon. Member has forgotten it, I will remind him of it:
In determining what are to be the transport units for which persons are invited to tender as aforesaid, the Commission shall have regard to the desirability of securing that persons desirous of entering or re-entering the road haulage industry have a reasonable opportunity of doing so notwithstanding that their resources permit them to do so only if their operations are on a small scale.…

Mr. Callaghan: I am obliged to the hon. Member. He is, of course, demonstrating the point that I illustrated at the beginning. We have got hardly any


new entrants. According to my information, the new entrants constitute less than one-fifth of the whole. What we have is a number of existing hauliers who are buying one vehicle in order to legitimise their illegitimate operations. The Minister has been forced into this position. He will disclaim any responsibility for it, but he gave the authority, under Section 6 (1), for it to happen.
The Minister has been forced into the position because it never was the case, it is not the case now, and it will not be the case, that there are hundreds of small hauliers desirous of returning to the road haulage business. But come what may, the Minister is determined to have these lorries sold irrespective of the effect on the national network of transport and irrespective of the loss that will be sustained by the community. That is exactly what the Minister's Bill has come down to at this stage.
We on this side thought that, although the Minister was keeping within the letter of the Act, he was getting well outside the spirit of the Act when, as early as 31st March, in answer to a Question in the House, he announced that he was ready to use the chattels section—under which vehicles could be sold not as part of businesses but as single vehicles—to dispose of the lorries.
The Minister told us, as I read earlier, that it was his intention to return to the pre-nationalisation pattern as far as possible. He is not going to begin to do so. He will be a long way outside it. Let me remind him of these simple figures. In round figures, about 3,000 firms were nationalised, covering the 40,000 lorries. So far, in selling 6,000 lorries, the Minister has created 1,887 units. This will be nothing like the pre-nationalisation pattern. The Minister is not breaking up British Road Services and selling businesses. He is atomising British Road Services, and he knows very well that what he has done has been to go into the second-hand market.
I should not be surprised, from some of the comments I have seen in some of the commercial journals, if there is not a disposition on the part of some Conservative back benchers to blame the Road Haulage Disposal Board and the Transport Commission for this. I hope they will not do so, because the Minister

himself has paid a very-deserved tribute to the Road Haulage Disposal Board. He said in June:
The Road Haulage Disposal Board is an impartial body and is doing its job to the Minister's complete satisfaction and with his full confidence.
I am very glad he paid that tribute to it. It think it is so, and I am sure he will repeat it today, which will dispose of any criticism anybody on the Government side of the House wants to make similar to the criticisms made in the commercial journals.
For instance, the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Sir R. Robinson) had a case of a haulier who complained to him, and it found its way into the trade Press. The Minister had to write back that the complaint had been investigated and there was no foundation for the assertion that had been made. I am very glad, indeed, that the Minister adheres to that view, because it is my own opinion that Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve has done a first-class job, but even he cannot create buyers when they are not there.

Viscount Hinchingbrooke: How does the hon. Gentleman square his tribute to the Road Haulage Disposal Board with the terms of the Motion before the House?

Mr. Callaghan: The terms of the Motion that I have moved on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself do not condemn the Board. What they condemn is Her Majesty's Government. They are the people we are after, because that is where the mischief has been done and that is where the responsibility lies.
One word about the future. The Minister has got to the position where, in the words of the Road Haulage Disposal Board, it looks as though he will not be able to sell more than about 10,000 to 15,000 vehicles to small hauliers. What is he going to do? There are a number of rumours going round, about which the Minister might satisfy us today. There is the rumour that there are a number of City interests which will be willing to buy shares or have some financial interest in companies if the Minister will agree to set them up. For sheer, naked greed I have rarely seen anything like this. Wait until the House hears what the proposition is to be.
The proposition is that the British Transport Commission should retain the management, that it should be even allowed to retain 51 per cent. of the shares in order to keep the management while the City financiers are going to take the profits of the 49 per cent. Let me read what appears in "Motor Transport":
Although ways of getting round the Act have been considered, so far the Minister is opposed to any legal quibbling and any such schemes must be held in abeyance until it is decided whether or not to amend the Act to enable this to be done.
I hope the words "so far" will continue to be true.
It seems that private capital would be available for this company structure, the City being interested, but these merchant bankers require B.T.C. management to continue and are not concerned if its interest should be 51 per cent. to give it control. Their interest is in the profits that can be made, and if they put up 95 per cent. of the capital it would be effective enough.
I think it would be.

The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): Is the hon. Gentleman quoting what he has called a City interest or is he merely quoting the view of a writer in "Motor Transport"?

Mr. Callaghan: I made it quite clear that I was quoting from what a special correspondent had to say when writing about the disposal of British Road Services. If the Minister is going to get up and say there are no proposals on foot to dispose of those interests on the basis of 51 per cent. to the B.T.C. and 49 per cent. to City interests—

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am quite prepared to get up and say that that article is correct in saying that I will not sanction anything which would be a fraud on the Act passed in Parliament.

Mr. Callaghan: I notice that the Minister has not answered my question. Will he get up and say that there are no proposals on foot, being discussed informally either with the Minister or with other persons, to provide 51 per cent. of the interest for B.T.C. and 49 per cent. for private financiers?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: When I make my speech, I will deal with this and every other aspect of the matter, but meanwhile I reiterate that it is my intention to see

that the Act is carried out and to call upon the Commission, with the sanction of the Disposal Board, to dispose of all the assets of the road haulage services other than those retained by the Commission. I have no intention of sanctioning anything which would be contrary to the intentions of Parliament.

Mr. Callaghan: In view of the Minister's failure to answer the question, we can draw our own conclusions, but I think the Minister, to do him justice, will find it difficult to deny the truth. It is well known that several bankers—I am not going to dignify them by mentioning their names; there are those in the House who know to whom I am referring—are financially interested in this proposition and are discussing it.
I think it is not unknown among hon. Members that there are a number of rather fishy gentlemen who have been anxious to buy a substantial interest. I do not propose to dignify them either by mentioning their names, but what I say to the Minister is this—it is no use his looking to us for any help in putting amending legislation through to try to dispose of lorries by this method, because he will not get it. There will be no help from us for a Bill under which the Minister can sell 49 per cent, of the profits to private enterprise when they are not willing to do anything for the service. B.T.C. do not want the money, and we do not intend that this sort of thing should go through with our sanction or with our silent approval.
I should like to mention one other factor. There is a proposal on foot—perhaps the Minister will deny this, although I do not think he will—to buy Pickfords. What drove away the people who were interested in buying Pickfords? I should like to tell the House what finally made the people interested turn away from the proposal. It was the fact that the British Transport Commission is empowered under the Act to keep a large number of the vehicles which would be in competition with the vehicles of this private enterprise undertaking and it would have to compete with them. These gentlemen who believe in private enterprise are so confident of their ability to win against a nationalised undertaking that they backed down immediately they knew that the British Transport Commission would be operating its own vehicles.
I say to the Minister that there is only one solution to this problem, and everything that has happened over the last 14 months convinces us that it is the only solution; that is, to maintain in public hands this singularly profitable organisation and to integrate it with other transport services. That is what we shall do.
I think the Minister is going to have more difficulty in selling the lorries. It is an ironic coincidence that, while he is breaking up the undertaking, British Road Services are becoming more efficient and more profitable. The British Road Services accident rate has been dropping and it has been welded into an organisation which, as every hon. Gentleman on the other side of the House knows, nobody in business today wants to see destroyed. Last year it made a profit of £8 million, and I ask the Minister whether it is not the case that its profitability this year is running at the same rate as it ran last year.
How different from the story that the Minister told us a few years ago about its being a financial incubus pressing heavily upon the British Transport Commission which ought to be relieved of it and which he was taking off it. How unfair hon. Members opposite were when they used to make their case against British Road Services. They knew they were being unfair, because British Road Services had not had the time to organise the job. They knew that the last firms were only acquired in the months when they came into office and they came to this House months later protesting that British Road Services were not making a profit.
They are making a profit now and they will go on making substantial profits, because I have no doubt at all that if the Minister abandoned the sale of these lorries and raised the 25-mile limit British Road Services could compete very successfully indeed with any private haulier who tried to compete with them. I think he ought to try that. That would be in line with Conservative philosophy about competition. He does not try it because he dare not try it. He knows that British Road Services are too efficient to put them in competition with private road hauliers.
I do not think there will be any challenge to that, but if there is, I came

prepared for it. I have here a good many testimonials to British Road Services. Some people do not want their names to be published, and I will tell the House why. They are afraid of hon. Gentlemen opposite. How many times do people come up to us and say, "You know, British Road Services are doing very well but we understand we cannot say this publicly because it would make things difficult for us." That is said many times. Hon. Gentlemen opposite know it. The managing director of an important company wrote:
Quite frankly, when British Road Services were formed I viewed the change with considerable alarm…. I have been most agreeably surprised. Your service has been excellent and most efficient. We have had every courtesy and understanding…
There are dozens of these.

Mr. Geoffrey Hirst: Mr. Geoffrey Hirst (Shipley)rose—

Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Hirst) can keep quiet. He made a speech last time based on one small concern in his constituency, tried to condemn the whole of British Road Services, and told us that he was not speaking for the Chambers of Commerce. He had his lesson afterwards, so he had better keep quiet.

Mr. Hirst: The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong.

Mr. Callaghan: We say that the Minister should abandon forthwith the sales of these lorries. If he did, he would be preserving an enterprise which has justified itself to the hilt. Moreover, he would be able to relieve trade and industry of a levy which amounts to nearly £4 million a year, which they are paying at present to make up for the deficit that is to be incurred while he indulges in his second-hand lorry sales. The right hon. Gentleman could relieve trade and industry of £4 million a year tomorrow. I ask him how he proposes at the end of September to calculate the amount of the loss which will be incurred, which he has a statutory duty to do. Under the Act he has to make a provisional estimate by 30th September of the total loss so that he can fix the levy. How can he do that when he has sold only 20 per cent. of the assets? Let him cut the sales now and recognise that he was wrong. He cannot recapture his reputation, but at least there is no reason why the right hon.


Gentleman should make matters worse in the transport world than they have become since his intervention.
There is one other solution. He could, of course, resign. Or, if he does not want to do that, he could swop with the Minister of Education. The Minister of Education is very good at proving that the fewer schools are started the more school places there are. If she could translate her talents to his Ministry and prove that the fewer lorries are sold the more there are in private hands, I would be content with that logic. And when I recall the glibness with which the Minister of Transport can prove that 20 per cent. of sales is equivalent to 86 per cent. of sales, I feel that he is lost to education. Think what he could do with a backward form in arithmetic. The real solution is the one that we all hope will come very soon, and that is, not that we should exchange Ministers who have failed, but that the whole Government should resign and let us get on with the job.

Mr. A. Blenkinsop (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East): I beg to second the Motion.

4.4 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: When the Opposition, in this Motion, invite the Government to abandon further sales of vehicles and premises under the Transport Act of 1953, they are under no illusion, nor has the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) sought to create any, as to what that invitation amounts to. It is, in fact, a demand for the repeal of the 1953 Transport Act under which these sales must take place. That is embodied in Section 1 of the 1953 Transport Act.
Now, no one can complain if the Opposition object to an Act which they opposed at every stage and put on the Order Paper a Motion which is a scarcely veiled demand for its repeal. However, the question to which the House must address itself today, and the question to which the public want to know the answer, is whether the experience of the last 12 months is such as to justify, let alone enforce, such a change of policy and opinion as to reverse the decision which the House took in the Transport Act of a year ago.
The Opposition have based their case upon two considerations: upon the process of disposal up to the present time

and upon the financial results of the British Transport Commission in the last 12 months. We must, therefore, examine those contentions to see how far they would justify a demand for the reversal of the policy of the Government and of the decision of the House.
What we are considering is the result of barely six months' sales—the result of tenders which were to come in from the months of January to June inclusive. In those first six months of this year, 45 per cent. of the vehicles offered have been sold; of the vehicles which were offered without premises, 75 per cent. have been sold. Taking those crude and simple percentages for a start, there is no overwhelming evidence there of a failure in disposal of the British Transport Commission's road haulage undertaking. But I agree that we have to go behind those figures and look at the circumstances attending the first six months of this operation.
In the first place—and this has been emphasised by the Road Haulage Disposal Board itself—the initial stages of this operation were of necessity experimental. As is pointed out in the ninth paragraph of its Second Report,
it was not until List 4, published in March, that a beginning could be made in offering units designed to meet particular requirements revealed in correspondence received in December and January…
So at least the first three of these six months, at least the first half of the period of which we are considering the results, must be regarded, in fairness to the British Transport Commission itself, as an experimental period.
But there is more than that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) has reminded the House, the Act imposes an obligation upon the Commission to ensure that the sale takes place in such a manner that the small man—I will use that as a shorthand expression for the somewhat lengthier circumlocution embodied in the Act—has a chance to participate in acquiring the assets sold. There was only one way, so the Disposal Board decided and the Commission agreed, in which this duty—a duty laid upon them by Parliament—could be discharged.
This is mentioned in the seventh paragraph of the First Report:
As a first step it was essential to test the market in order to be satisfied that the small


operators have been given chances of buying transport units for immediate operation prior to the time when others will be in competition with them by reason of the removal of the 25 mile restriction at the end of 1954.
And so, in this initial period of six months, the British Transport Commission and the Disposal Board were under an obligation to offer assets which could be disposed of in small units, and to satisfy themselves that the demand of the small man had been fairly met before they proceeded to larger operations of disposal. That is the background against which we have to view the results of the first six months. It is a background not created by the arbitrary decisions of my right hon. Friend. It is due to the British Transport Commission and the Disposal Board doing what Parliament ordered them to do.
Whatever may be the experience of other hon. Members, my impression is that the Commission have succeeded very fairly in reaching what they and the Disposal Board call "the small man demand" and satisfying it. I was delighted to see in the Press in my constituency a week ago a picture relating to a Mr. Smith, of Wolverhampton. The caption to the picture said:
In 1948, he was the first man in the town to lose his vehicles and depot to British Road Services.
The caption then goes on:
Today…Mr. Smith became the first man in Wolverhampton to repurchase from British Road Services a sizeable transport unit and return it to private ownership and operation.…Mr. Smith has bought the depot together with nine eight-wheeled vehicles and six four-wheelers.
Then, what I thought was very interesting:
Most of those big wagons will be on the road later today, carrying goods.
Above, there is a picture of Mr. Smith greeting as old friends the vehicles which he formerly owned and has now acquired back from the British Transport Commission. [Interruption.] I realise that hon. Gentlemen opposite do not like that sort of thing. They do not like to see a small operator who has been doing this job up to 1948 getting a chance to do it again. For my part, I am delighted to see it. That is the difference between us. To me this is evidence that the British Transport Commission has been carrying out its duties under the Act in securing, as a first

part of this operation, that the smaller operator gets a chance to participate in the industry in future.

Mr. James Harrison: Would the hon. Member argue that the case of Mr. Smith is typical of the sale that has been taking place generally of these lorries in the last six months and of the re-entry of the old road haulier into the business?

Mr. Powell: That is what the hon. Member's hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) really said; but he wrapped it up a bit. He said that 80 per cent. of those who had been acquiring these vehicles were road haulage operators at present. Of course. Many of the men who were in road haulage in 1948 have stayed in road haulage within the 25-mile limit, and are taking this opportunity to engage in long-distance road haulage again. What we are securing is the re-entry of the small man into long-distance road haulage.
Now I want to turn to the financial side. Hitherto, we have been considering only the numerical side. I want to attempt, in spite of the fact that it may be a little premature to do so, to estimate the financial results of this operation as a whole.
The book value of the assets of British Road Services which are to be disposed of, is, as the last Report of the British Transport Commission shows, approximately £45½ million. If we make allowance for the 10 per cent. of those assets which will be retained under the Act by the British Transport Commission, we arrive at £41 million as the approximate book value of the assets to be disposed of. Out of the 13,000 vehicles offered—we have to work on numbers of vehicles as our guide—6,000 have been disposed of at a total price of £7½million. If hon. Members will work out the prices which can be expected for the whole of the vehicles, assuming that the remainder will be sold at the same rate, they will find that the figure is almost exactly £41 million.

Mr. Callaghan: I intervene so that we may get these figures right. The Minister of Transport said in a reply the other day that the total value of the assets was £71 million and that the assets to be disposed of were £63 million.

Mr. Powell: That is quite right. The figure included an element which I shall bring in, and that is the book value of the goodwill. I am talking at the moment of the book value of the assets.
Hon. Members will find in paragraph 8 of the First Report of the Disposal Board the figures I am using. Thus, on a very rough computation, which anyone might make to see how the sale is going and what sort of value will be obtained for the whole, we arrive at the conclusion that the assets will be disposed of for approximately their book value as assets.
There is no question, so far, of the British Transport Commission's being forced to sell off these units at knockdown prices. On the average, they are being disposed of at their book value as assets. That does not look like a forced sale of public property in job lots at low prices. Very much the reverse.

Mr. Percy Collick: Mr. Percy Collick (Birkenhead)rose—

Mr. Powell: Someone may object—probably the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Collick) will object—that it is unfair to take these first specimens, the vehicles which have been sold out of the first 13,000 offered, and gross them up pro rata over the whole number. I appreciate that there are factors on one side and on the other. One may say that the fact that the 25-mile limit will be raised in just under six months' time gives the units disposed of up to the end of this year an extra value, which is obviously constantly diminishing, and that we shall not be able to reach that value after that date is reached. Certainly, we must take that factor into account. On the other hand, we have to take into account the fact that nearly all these vehicles have been sold without premises and there are still the premises and physical assets to be disposed of, which are left out of account by basing the calculation on the proportion of vehicles. I would feel, therefore that, though all this is a very rough estimate, merely a guide to the sort of thing which is going on, it is not unfair to claim that these vehicles are being disposed of at prices which fairly represent their book value as assets.
Now I come to the remaining element of value which was acquired from the private owners under the 1947 Act. the

value of goodwill. It has always been implicit in the fact of taking businesses and merging them in a monopoly undertaking that we could not expect to recover the goodwill element. That has been acknowledged from the beginning on both sides of the House, as I will show. I noticed, for example, during the Second Reading debate on 18th November, 1952, that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said:
No one has had the courage to suggest that we could possibly expect to get a payment back for a goodwill that we had destroyed.…There had been two days during which anyone could have suggested it. I made the point yesterday afternoon and no one has dealt with it.
Then, addressing the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), my right hon. and learned Friend said:
If he thinks that after a Socialist Measure has destroyed profits we can expect people to buy back at the private enterprise rate of profit, I wonder what is the basis of his thoughts."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th November, 1952; Vol. 507, c. 1709–1710.]
So it was recognised on both sides of the House when the Transport Act of last year was passed that the public should not and could not expect, and that the British Transport Commission was not required, to recover the price originally paid for goodwill upon nationalisation.

Mr. G. Lindgren: Would the hon. Member say that a business in private hands making £8 million per year profit had no goodwill? If not, what about British Road Services?

Mr. Powell: Yes, but it so happens that the profits made by this business over the years—

Mr. A. C. Manuel: What years?

Mr. Powell: —1948 to 1952—which were the facts in front of the prospective purchasers or repurchasers of these assets, showed nothing like that rate of profit—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] This was not controverted during the passage of the Bill last year. The profits bore no relation to those which formed the basis of payment for goodwill on acquisition.

Mr. Ernest Popplewell (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West): Will the hon. Member agree that a would-be purchaser, considering the business, would of necessity


take into account the trading profits of recent years based upon the build-up of the particular business? Would that not be more material than the time when the businesses were taken over, when there was chaos?

Mr. Powell: I am afraid that the hon. Member has got it upside down. It is the £30 million for goodwill which was based on profits during his period of chaos before 1948. It is on the far lower rate of profit—in some cases negative—since 1948 that the goodwill realisable on sale must be based.
The final aspect of this disposal is whether, in the course of the disposal, the interests dependent upon road haulage in this country have been put to any disadvantage; for, of course, it is a duty laid on the Transport Commission by the terms of the Act to minimise that disadvantage. This is a matter in which all hon. Members are bound to rely upon their own experience. I can only give mine to the House. It is that in the first two years in which I was in the House—1950–51—my postbag was never free from letters from firms, large and small, in my constituency complaining of the services which they got from British Road Services—

Mr. Manuel: Did the hon. Member organise it?

Mr. Powell: —but, in the period of the last six months in which 15,000 of the 36,000 vehicles—nearly half—of British Road Services have been under offer for sale in transport units and in which private enterprise has been taking over gradually from British Road Services, I have not received a single criticism giving evidence of intermission of service. Nor have I seen a single case reported in the Press in my area. This is a matter in which every hon. Member has to rely on the evidence of his own constituency, the evidence of observation in the area where he lives and works. I have given mine to the House for what it is worth.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East referred in passing at the end of his speech to the financial results of the working of British Road Services over the last year or so. I have seen in certain o journals a forecast that when the British Transport Commission publishes its

Report for 1953 the working surplus of British Road Services will be found to be in the region of £8 million, which compares with the figure of £1·6 million for 1952. I have no reason to know whether that figure is simply a guess, or perhaps a leak, or perhaps in some way inspired. Should it prove to be correct and should it prove that the working surplus of British Road Services has been very much better in 1953 than in 1952, I should be the first person to be gratified.
The volume of road transport—as, indeed, the volume of transport generally—is one of the best indices we have of commercial activity. The improvement which we all hope we shall see in the turnover and working results of British Road Services in 1953 compared with 1952 would be the very best tribute that could be paid to the success of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his colleagues in restoring the country from its financial difficulties of 1952.

Mr. Callaghan: May it, then, not be the case that the comparatively small profits of British Road Services in 1952 were due, not to its inefficiency as the hon. Member used to claim, but to the low level of commercial and industrial activity?

Mr. Powell: That may be so, but the hon. Member will also accept the lower working results in previous years, in 1951, 1950 and 1949—

Mr. William Hamilton: 1952 was a slump year, and so was 1949.

Mr. Manuel: We had not acquired the services then.

Mr. Powell: —had a similar origin.
However, it never has been on the basis of the financial results of British Road Services that the case for the 1953 Act—which hon. Members opposite are now claiming should be repealed—has rested. The issue between the two sides of the House over that Act and the issue today is one of principle, of our general approach to the organisation of transport in this country. It is whether the co-ordination of transport—which, in the sense of the most economical use of our resources, both sides of the House want—is best secured by single ownership and


central control, or by separate ownership and competition. That is the issue of principle.
Therefore, when we are asked in this debate to accept the repeal of the 1953 Act, when we are asked on the very flimsy evidence of the experience of the last six months to accept a reversal of what we then decided, it is fair to look, if only for a moment, at what the alternative is. In "Challenge to Britain" there is one sentence on this subject which expresses what the Opposition would put in the place of the 1953 Act. Here it is:
Labour will remove all restrictions which are aimed at preventing the British Transport Commission from developing a fully-integrated public service of road and rail transport.
"Labour would remove all restrictions" preventing that desirable result. One would think that very happily phrased. Fortunately, we are not left entirely without further interpretation of what this sentence might mean; for the Labour Party is assisting the country in the understanding of "Challenge to Britain" by publishing a series of "Challenge to Britain Policy Pamphlets." As a pamphleteer myself, I am never loth to advertise the work of other pamphleteers.
In Pamphlet No. 1 we find the alternative policy, which the House is being asked this afternoon to accept, expressed in a little more detail. We find that the purchasing road haulage operator will,
like other operators, be subject to any general limitation on private operation which the public interest demands. There must, for example, at least be some limitation on the area of private operation, possibly a 25-mile radius from the operator's base.
So we get the 25-mile radius back under the "removal of all restrictions." This is one element of the freedom which is offered by the Labour Party to the road haulage industry.
The pamphlet continues:
Further, when his licence expires he cannot automatically expect its renewal. If the B.T.C.'s road haulage undertaking is able and willing to carry the traffic, the need for his services will no longer exist.
Surely there are no "restrictions" there: the operator just does not get his licence. So there is another element in Labour's policy for the co-ordination of transport—the 25-mile limit, plus the removal of licences from private operators

where the British Transport Commission is considered able and willing to undertake the work.
And what about the C licence operator, that phrase which veils the reality of a man carrying his own goods in his own vehicle? The pamphlet says:
There are consequently strong arguments for a restriction of 'C' licence operation, either by making the grant of a 'C' licence conditional on proof of need or by limiting the radius of 'C' licence operation.
One has to prove one needs to carry one's own goods in one's own vehicle. That is because the Labour Party thinks we should avoid
the socially undesirable result of the 'C' licence operator carrying those goods which are easy to handle and offering difficult loads to the public transport services.
So again, we are to have the "removal of all restrictions" by the C licence holder, the man who carries his own goods in his own vehicle, being gagged and reduced to impotence.
If the Opposition are confident of the popularity and the soundness of their alternative policy I cannot think why it is that they did not go into a little more detail in this Motion; why they contented themselves with asking the Government, in a veiled form, to repeal the 1953 Act. Why did not they go on and write into the Motion a statement of exactly what they propose to do with road transport? It is because they know perfectly well that if that reality were understood by the public it would be ignominiously rejected. They failed to get their proposal through when they attempted to do so in this House in 1947, when they had a majority of 200; and they know that it would be hooted off the stage if they advanced it now.
We are today embarked upon realising the alternative method for the coordination of transport to that imperfectly sketched out in the 1947 Act. It is, to assume, as we are prepared to assume in many other fields, that if the consumer is allowed to choose between services offered to him at genuine prices, his choice will commonly be the right one. That work must go on.

4.31 p.m.

Mr. J. A. Sparks: I listened with some interest to what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) had to say. I was hoping


that he would be able to indicate to the House the reason for the failure of the Road Haulage Disposal Board to dispose of those vehicles which it has offered for sale and also that he would inform the House how the remaining vehicles left unsold would be rapidly disposed of. But I listened in vain for that information. The hon. Member gave no explanation of the fact that the Road Haulage Disposal Board has been in existence now for 14 months and has offered over 13,000 vehicles for sale in seven separate lists, but has only been able to sell less than half of them, namely, 5,900, leaving a balance of 26,500 still to be sold.
What my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) said in opening the debate is true, that during the passage of the Bill the right hon. Gentleman did not anticipate that he would experience this difficulty in disposing of the vehicles. I am sure that now the Minister realises that much of the criticism we offered at that time has proved to be correct. The fact is that the public do not wish to see the road haulage activities of the British Transport Commission disintegrated in the way in which the right hon. Gentleman and the Government are endeavouring to do.
I am sorry that the former Member for Abingdon is not with us today. His views on this problem are very important and, as everyone in the transport world will agree, very progressive. On more than one occasion he spoke in this House about transport problems and said that we are moving rapidly into an age when we must talk of transport rather than of road haulage or rail operations; that the evolutionary trend of transport in this country is inevitably in the direction of integration. But the right hon. Gentleman and his friends are trying to reverse the evolutionary trend and throw transport back into the conditions of private competition which existed 50, 60 and more years ago.
The right hon. Gentleman will find that a return to the days of "jungle warfare" in transport would be disastrous for the future of this country. It is such a "jungle warfare" which is embodied in the principle of the Act and in the function which the Road Haulage Disposal Board is now undertaking. I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman will

dispose of the remaining vehicles belonging to the British Transport Commission in a short period. At the present rate of disposal it will take at least five years to get rid of the remaining 26,500. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman can hope for a more rapid disposal rate because experience has already indicated to those people who have purchased units that there is not as much business available as they had hoped.
More than one road haulier who has already bought vehicles from the Road Haulage Disposal Board would be ready to sell them back tomorrow for the same price because they have found that, having bought the vehicles, there is not the amount of traffic available which they had hoped there would be. Why is that? It is 'because the senders of traffic, those who have been accustomed to use the British Transport Commission's vehicles, have continued to allow the Commission to carry their traffic. A second reason is that the services of the British Transport Commission today are more economical. Its vehicles are more heavily loaded than before. The efficiency of its fleet has increased. It is now carrying more traffic than before with a smaller number of vehicles.
As time goes on, experience will indicate to any prospective purchaser that it is bad business to buy these vehicles. Sooner or later the Minister will find that he will have to decide either to draw a line and permit the remaining vehicles to remain with the Commission, or to give away these lorries at discreditable prices. I hope, therefore, that this afternoon the right hon. Gentleman will be forthcoming in his approach to this question. There is no doubt that the policy of the Government in this respect has completely failed, and the sooner the right hon. Gentleman realises that, and faces the consequences, the better it will be for the prestige of the Government—that is, if the Government have any prestige left, and I do not think that they have very much.
This is a very sorry business. There was the Commission with a fleet of just under 45,000 road haulage vehicles. It had built up a grand organisation which was being integrated with railway operations. It was integrating transport to the point where greater efficiency and mobility were being achieved. Just imagine the problem of the Commission


with the threat of the consequences of this Act hanging over its head. It has to denude itself of three-quarters of its vehicles. How is it to arrange its operations and to keep traffic flowing, not knowing from month to month whether it will have sufficient vehicles to enable it to undertake the responsibility of conveying the traffic?
Those responsible for the road haulage section of the Commission have an almost impossible job. They are trying to juggle about with the traffic offered to them at a time when they are uncertain what number of vehicles will be available on any given date. They are uncertain what exact basis of operation they can expect. The Commission deserves the greatest credit for carrying on its road haulage services as it has done in the last 14 months. From the point of view of efficiency in transport, the sooner the Minister ends this uncertainty the better it will be for all concerned.
I assure him that not only is it offering considerable problems to those responsible for management, but it is causing great disquiet among the staff in the railways as well as in the road haulage section of the industry. Although the recent strike of locomotive men was not directly concerned with the problem with which we are dealing today, nevertheless those men have at the back of their minds the action of the Govern-meet who are deliberately seeking to disintegrate the most lucrative part of the transport system.
Every railwayman knows that the future of the railways is closely bound up with the development of road transport. We are not living in the time of Queen Victoria. We have gone a long way ahead since then. Every railwayman knows that the future success of the railways is intimately linked with the development of road transport. The sooner that is realised by the Government, the better it will be for the country and for national transport.
To cut away, as the Government have done, that part of transport which is better able to secure a surplus on its operations, and to leave the railway alone and isolated to carry on a service which with the passing of time it is becoming more and more difficult to operate economically, is ill-advised. It would be out of order to discuss the railway

side of the operations of the Commission—but it is history. They were built to serve an age which has passed away. The railways must re-adapt themselves to new conditions. They were able to cope with the transport problem in Queen Victoria's day, but road transport, a comparatively modern development, also serves the need of our time. There cannot be any successful future for the railways, with their overcapitalisation, except by considerable capital investment to modernise equipment, stock and operations generally. Their future lies in co-ordination of road and rail so that one section is able to help the other.
In the Post Office organisation the same principle applies to some extent. There are certain parts of the Post Office service which are run at a loss, but nobody suggests that they should be discontinued. Especially in Scotland many postal services are run at a loss, but in other parts of the country a surplus is made. The surplus balances with the loss, and we get an equilibrium. The same principle must inevitably apply to transport. We must be prepared to combine in a unified system not only that part of transport which is modern, but that other part of the system which is not so well equipped to meet the needs of our time.
Railwaymen are well aware of the ill-effects of the policy of the Government in this respect. When the Government take action to deprive the Commission of the most remunerative part of its enterprise, and then expects railwaymen to make sacrifices, they are most unreasonable. I appeal to the Minister to examine the position again. An attempt has been made to carry out the principles of the Act. Fourteen months is long enough for the experiment. The fact that the right hon. Gentleman has not been able to dispose of the vehicles available and that a prolonged continuation of this uncertainty is bound to have damaging effects upon our transport organisation, to say nothing of the discontent among the staff, must be taken into consideration.
The Minister would be doing the best thing in the interests of the country if he announced a final date beyond which there would be no more disposals of road haulage vehicles. The Commission would then be able to arrange its enterprises in


the certain knowledge that on an appointed day the uncertainty would cease and that, from then on, its organisation could be consolidated with the equipment and vehicles which it could expect to have left. To proceed in a piecemeal way, offering vehicles for sale, getting no response and withdrawing them and having to reshuffle them and offer them again, to find that many are still unsold, causes great difficulty and damage to our national transport system.
The Minister has had a good innings and the Government have had a good opportunity to test their opinion and their policy. I suggest that at last they should realise that the policy has not been successful and that they should decide from now on to permit the Commission to retain the unsold vehicles which it now possesses. The Government should call a halt to the uncertainty and enable the Commission to carry on its good work of improving the transport of our country and giving the nation the efficient system which it must have if our industries are to be properly equipped. Also, such an action would give greater peace of mind to the staff who have to operate these enterprises.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. John Maclay: The speech of the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) was at least less vague than the Opposition Motion, although the hon. Member seemed to be wandering between two methods of thinking about the problem. He was arguing that because the sales of units had not gone on as fast as some people might have expected, the whole scheme ought to be stopped. But, peeping through his argument the whole time was the good old word "integration." The hon. Member put his finger on the weakness of the Opposition's case when he said that the railways needed the profitable side of road transport. The hon. Member was, in effect, saying that the provider of transport is all-important and that the user is unimportant.

Mr. Sparks: I thought I emphasised that the users of transport are satisfied with the service which they have had because they are allowing their traffic to remain with the Commission and not letting it go with the lorries which are sold.

Mr. Maclay: If we went into the argument as to whether the users of transport are satisfied with the British Road Services at this moment or not, many things would be said in the debate which could not easily be answered by those about whom they were said, so I do not propose to go into that matter. Very large numbers of transport users are by no means satisfied at the moment with the services provided by British Road Services. I do not want to say more than that. I do not want to give detailed cases. There is a cure for every detailed case that one produces, but the problem crops up again somewhere else. One can always run down inefficiency in a large organisation and put it right—

Mr. J. Harrison: If it is a nationalised organisation, but not if it is a private organisation.

Mr. Maclay: One can get single instances of inefficiency in nationalised industries put right, but one cannot get the whole thing put right. If there is inefficiency in private industry the section concerned goes down and another section which can do the job comes up. That brings us to the major argument against State ownership. I want to keep reasonably to the Motion, but not very close to it because I do not believe that its substance—

Mr. Callaghan: How does the right hon. Gentleman reconcile his experience of numerous complaints against British Road Services with the experience of his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who had had none?

Mr. Maclay: The hon. Member must be careful about that. I tried not to get dragged into the argument too much, because it is a bad one. I did not say that I had heard of numerous complaints against British Road Services. I said that hon. Members opposite seemed to think that throughout British industry and commerce there was the belief that British Road Services were the answer to the transport needs of the country, and that that could be argued for a long time.
Let us look at the Motion. Part of it has been dealt with completely in the admirable speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). One reason given by the


Motion for calling upon the Government to abandon further sales of vehicles and premises is:
… the facts disclosed in the First and Second Reports of the Road Haulage Disposal Board…
It really is a very ingenuous approach to the problem to produce that as one of the reasons. It would not have been practicable to go faster than the Disposal Board has gone while honouring the pledges which the Minister gave during the debates and which the Act required to be honoured.
The second reason given in the Motion is also an extremely ingenuous one:
…the continued financial and operating success of British Road Services …
That might constitute a case for saying that all road transport should not be taken away from the Commission if the Government intended to do so, but the Government do not intend to do so. When the Act is fully implemented the Commission will remain by far the largest single owner and operator of road transport in the country.
As was said yesterday in an admirable leader in "The Times," there is probably a very important part for nationalised road transport to play in the nation's transport services provided it continues to be well managed. I am making no reflection upon the management of British Road Services, because I have always believed that it was up against an impossible task in trying to operate on too large a scale.

Mr. Callaghan: It has been doing it well.

Mr. Maclay: I am putting my point of view. The fact that at the moment there is continued financial and operating success is not a case for reversing the decision represented by the Act.
One has to go back to the motives which persuaded hon. Members opposite to nationalise road transport. What produced the 1947 Act? There were two main reasons for it. One was the simple belief of hon. Members opposite in the pure milk of Socialism. They believed that nationalisation would, in some magic way, produce wonderful results which have never yet been brought about in this world by Socialism. Many people really believed that there was

magic in the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. I do not propose to deal with that matter. I do not know whether any hon. Members opposite are still fooled by that phrase, and by the idea of Socialism, as the answer.
The fascinating thing about the past arguments relating to Socialism is that they always were based on the basic idea of the nationalisation of means of production, distribution and exchange, but no one ever went further into the idea to find out why that should produce an ideal world.

Mr. Sparks: Surely the right hon. Gentleman completely forgets the volume of expert opinion, having nothing to do with Socialism, which was in favour of nationalisation.

Mr. Maclay: As I said, there were two main reasons for the 1947 Act. One was that based on Socialism. I take it from what the hon. Member said that he has abandoned the rather elementary approach to the problem that pure Socialism answers everything. I hope he will be able to tell me that his colleagues have done the same and that he will explain that to the electors.
A great many people who still vote for the Labour Party have not the slightest idea what they are voting for; they are voting for a lot of words and they have not the slightest idea what they are going to get. If the hon. Member and his hon. Friends will explain to those electors that they are still voting for the nationalisation of all industry, I shall be very grateful to them for they will have done a good deal of our work for us.
I now come to the other section of thought, which I respect. There were those who sincerely believed—many experts were with them—that integration, which could only be carried out under single ownership, was the proper answer for transport. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West touched on this matter, but I wish to develop it a little further.
It was quite clear that the hon. Member for Acton still believes that integration is the answer. What does integration mean in the long run, particularly under common ownership? It means that we get the rail services carrying those things which somebody thinks should be carried


on the railways, the road services carrying those things which somebody thinks should be carried on the roads, and the coastwise shipping services carrying those things which somebody thinks should be carried by coastal steamers.
Who is that somebody? There is only one class of persons who can determine how goods should be travelling in the interests of the country and that class consists of the users. The great flaw in the arguments of those who were tempted into the integrating theory on transport was that they were thinking far too much in terms of integration in the interests of the provider of transport.
The former hon. Member for Abingdon, Lord Glyn, an old and much respected friend of mine, also, I believe, fell into that fallacy. His thinking was dictated by his railway experience. That approach was based on how we could build up a system to preserve the railways without too much difficulty and without the railways being forced to meet the full weight of road competition—and that is an approach based on the interests of the providers of transport and not on those of the users.

Mr. Sparks: Their interests coincide, and always have done. They are bound to do so.

Mr. Maclay: It simply does not follow. It is a fascinating theory, but it does not work out that way.
What has happened? The railways can play a tremendous part in the future of this country. They have been undoubtedly starved of the capital which they have needed since the war. I am not blaming anybody for it; we can all remember the ugly struggles to get the steel and the capital that was going. But, if the railways can get the right type of man, with young men coming up with the right type of ideas, I believe that the railways can give road haulage a terrific run for its money over the next 20 years. The one thing that will stop that happening is if the railways become frozen in a theoretical protected pattern in which it is determined that one type of goods go by rail, another by road and another by coastal shipping.
I mention coastal shipping because I think it has some very awkward problems to face. If it is subjected to the full

weight of inland transport competition when inland transport competition becomes as efficient as I believe it will when the Minister has succeeded in implementing the Act in full, then it will be up against graver difficulties than it would be in conditions of "integration." But in which conditions will goods be carried at the lowest cost? I have no doubt as to the answer. I believe we must break down this theory of complete integration, whereby everything is judged from the point of view of the provider of transport, and not the user. If not, we should have the goods of the country moving nicely and tidily in the directions in which somebody thinks it is right for them to move, but not necessarily in the way they should move.
There were two flaws in the 1947 Act, from this point of view. The first, of course, was that there was written into the Act during the Committee stage a provision that preserved the right of the user to choose his own means of transport. That would not have been so bad for the user if the means of transport which he wanted remained available, which would not necessarily have been so if full integration had come about. The other flaw was C licences.
These two things, the right of the transport user to choose his own method of transport and the granting of C licences, were concessions by the Minister to common sense, but I have never forgotten the face of the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) when he was sitting in that Committee and heard that the C licences concession had been given. The hon. Member is unashamedly and professedly a believer in the complete integration of transport, and he has got a very good case. All that I am trying to rub home at the moment is that that case is a good case only from the point of view of the provider of transport, and that the hon. gentleman completely forgets the people for whom the transport is provided.
One could demonstrate this by a dozen illustrations, and one has only to look abroad to see what happens when excessive centralisation is applied to intricate operations. I will not talk about Russia—although that country is not lacking in examples of extreme industrial inefficiency. Let us take another country and a different type of dictatorship—Argentina—where there is always a difficult job


in getting a lot of cereal products, such as maize, grain, etc., down to the ports in order to catch the appropriate ships. Before the war, it was not easy to get ships loaded there fast, but it could be done. Today, it is quite impossible, unless one is privileged by the dictator Government to have priority.
What they are trying to do there is to run on a State-controlled basis one of the most complicated businesses which one could try to run. It is the whole business of collecting the cargo up in the country, getting it down to the ports and loaded into the ships, and, from time to time, ships are lying there idle for weeks. In that sort of system we get the same type of clumsiness in operation as we could get here if the entire transport system is ever integrated under centralised direction.
There is another illustration that is worth mentioning, because I saw an example of it with my own eyes during the war. It related to the transport of cargoes from North America during the war, when there were tremendous problems in getting the cargoes down to the seaboard and into the ships. The authorities thought that this could be conducted as a military operation, that they could do without the small men who had been doing the job along the line, and could run the whole thing under one central control. They tried it and within a very few weeks they had to give it up. They returned to the old system in which a large number of individuals played each his own small but important part.

Mr. Stan Awbery: Surely, the right hon. Gentleman knows that we had to abolish that because of the competition? When it came to the ships that were handling the cargo, it was nationalisation, but, prior to the cargoes reaching the ships, they were handled by private enterprise, and, because that part of the system did not work, we had to abolish it.

Mr. Maclay: After a month, they had to go back to private enterprise, because they found that they could not get the job done otherwise. I know that these cases are not strictly comparable, but they are to a certain extent comparable—

Mr. Collick: Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me? He has considerable experience in shipping, and I think he will know from his own experience

that we did not have very much complaint at the way in which the co-ordinated transport system of the country was delivering cargo to the docks, but that, particularly in the ports in the North-West, the trouble was with the private enterprise people.

Mr. Maclay: What I know about this matter is exactly the opposite. There are serious difficulties in the minds of manufacturers as to whether the cargo will reach the ship in time or not, and I have had complaint after complaint about that. Whereas previously one could depend on the 12, 24 or 36 hours delivery being carried out, today one cannot depend on it, and people are missing the ships with their deliveries. The key "little" man who has got to get the stuff up to the ship has temporarily disappeared.

Mr. Collick: The difficulty is in getting the private road hauliers to get their stuff there in time; that is the problem.

Mr. Maclay: That is precisely the opposite of what I have been informed consistently takes place at these ports, and I think it is very extensive.
I am only trying to get home one point, and it is on this question of integration, which is the one thing that matters in this argument which is going to go on for a long time to come, and I say that integration in the interests of the provider of transport must be wrong for Britain, of all nations, because costs will be more and more important to our national survival in the critical years that are approaching pretty fast. The system of integration in which the consumer is allowed to express his views as to the best way of carrying his cargo is the one which we want to see operating.
I have the utmost admiration for the way in which the Minister of Transport has been trying to do an exceedingly difficult job. I confess that to undo mischief is not an easy thing, and I hope the House will confirm its complete confidence in the policy of the Minister and in the way in which my right hon. Friend is tackling this extremely difficult task.

5.9 p.m.

Mr. Frank McLeavy: I entirely support the view put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) in


what I thought was a very good speech which, as far as the Minister of Transport is concerned, was unanswerable. The Minister will remember that, from this side of the House, and particularly from those hon. Members associated with the transport industry, he was warned of the folly of the Transport Act, 1953. He was warned, not only that it was bad for the industry and for those engaged in it, but that it would not work in the way suggested in the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman, I know, remembers very well being strongly urged from this side of the House that, if he was determined to destroy the system of nationalised transport, he should at least take the precaution of reorganising road transport upon the company basis.
An argument put forward to the right hon. Gentleman at the time—and particularly by myself—was that it would be a greater safeguard to the industry and to the people engaged in it, and that, in the long run, it would be of greater service to the industrial life of the nation as well. We now find that the Measure which the Minister pushed through this House, and to which he would not accept any reasonable amendment from this side, is unworkable.
It has been disclosed by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) that only 6,000 vehicles out of a total of 36,000 have been sold. It is no use hon. Members opposite trying to argue that this is not the correct way in which to describe the percentage of sales. The fact remains that the Road Haulage Disposal Board had on several occasions to put up lots once, twice and even three times because it was unable to get purchasers for the vehicles.
I submit to the Minister and to the House that one of the greatest difficulties of the transport industry is that, for far too long, it has been bedevilled by political interference. I wish to make an appeal to the Minister on behalf of the industry and from the industrial point of view. Is it unreasonable to ask the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the whole position arising from the failure to sell the vehicles?
The Motion before the House
…calls upon Her Majesty's Government to abandon further sales of the vehicles …

I think that the Minister might well accept the Motion, not as a political attack, but rather as an opportunity to take a step which events have proved is the only practical one to take in the interests of the industry.
I should very much like to see a way found of getting over the various differences on both sides of the House whereby the transport industry, whether it be rail or road, could at least have a period of stability so that it could feel that it was not to be played about with and would not find itself in the position of being denationalised under one Government and renationalised under another.
I hope that common sense will prevail between the parties in this House, and that they will pay more regard to the representations made by the industry so that in a matter so vital to the well-being of the industrial life of the country, we can, even at this late hour, apply some common sense to the problem. I believe, and I said so at the time, that the Act of 1953 was an act of folly. I still believe that to be so, and events have proved that I was and am right.
I am not after the political blood of the right hon. Gentleman, because he is not the only politician in this House who has made a mistake—

Dr. H. Morgan: There are many worse.

Mr. McLeavy: —but I do say that he would gain very great respect and credit throughout the country if he would at least admit that in error he put too great a regard to the representations made by the Road Haulage Association, and was not prepared to listen to the views of those representing the workers in the industry.
I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to think again, and to see whether it is possible for both sides to get together in an endeavour to find an amicable compromise between one point of view and another so as to relieve the industry and the workers in it of the anxiety of disturbance and unemployment, and in an endeavour to give British industry generally some security so far as transport is concerned.
I feel very strongly about this matter. I would rather see a reasonable compromise arrived at on all sides which produced an adequate and efficient transport


system for the country, than I would the confusion of a dog fight between one side and the other on the question of denationalisation and renationalisation. As I have said, I think that this is an occasion on which an element of common sense might be introduced into the discussion of this matter.
I believe that if we were prepared to look at it from the purely industrial point of view, and tried to forget our political allegiances and views, we could arrive at a compromise satisfactory to all sections of the industry, and one which would at least give the prospect not only of peace in the industry, but the prospect of being able to render still greater service to the welfare of the nation and to its industrial development.

5.18 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: We have just listened to two very interesting speeches from hon. Members opposite. I very strongly dissent from the speech of the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks), because I simply do not believe that the railways are a dying and derelict concern dependent on subsidies from road transport. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mr. Sparks: I hope I did not say what the hon. Gentleman has just attributed to me. What I was trying to say was that the railways were, of course, laid down and built in the time of Queen Victoria, when conditions were quite different from what they are today, and that what they need more than anything else today is immense capital investment in order to bring them up to modern requirements.

Mr. Wilson: I think the hon. Gentleman is putting into his speech what was subsequently said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay). It simply is not true to say that at the present time the British Transport Commission is dependent on the roads for the maintenance of the railways, or, indeed, that it has been at any time since the passing of the 1947 Act. That does not bear any relation to the truth at all. The greater part of its revenue still comes from the railways and not from the roads.
I do not wish to develop that theme, nor do I propose to follow the very interesting speech of the hon. Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy), although

it was a very interesting contribution to come from the other side of the House. It is certainly time that we began to think of something more than the perpetual battle of denationalisation and nationalisation, but that is not what the Motion calls for. It calls for the abandonment of further sales under the Transport Act, 1953, in view of the facts disclosed in the First and Second Reports of the Road Haulage Disposal Board.
Surely any impartial consideration of the Board's First and Second Reports will show that not only were the Reports written with admirable clarity and candour, on which the Board should be congratulated, but that the Board and the Commission quite rightly tackled first what is perhaps the hardest part of their task, namely, the giving of an opportunity to the small man to come back into the business. I have already quoted, in an interjection, Section 3 (3) of the Transport Act, 1953, which imposes upon the Commission a duty and states:
In determining what are to be the transport units for which persons are invited to tender as aforesaid, the Commission shall have regard to the desirability of securing that persons desirous of entering or re-entering the road haulage industry have a reasonable opportunity of doing so notwithstanding that their resources permit them to do so only if their operations are on a smaller scale,…
That was an absolute duty imposed upon the Commission and those words did not get into the Act by accident.
Similar words are employed in two pamphlets issued by the Conservative Party—the one issued for the last Election, entitled "Britain Strong and Free" and the other the "Manifesto of the Conservative and Unionist Party" also issued for the General Election in 1951. "Britain Strong and Free" said:
Private road hauliers will be given an opportunity of coming back into the business…
The "Manifesto of the Conservative and Unionist Party" said:
Private road hauliers will be given the chance to return to business …
Section 3 (3) was deliberately inserted into the Act in fulfilment of Election promises and it seems right that the Road Haulage Disposals Board, in paragraph 18 of its First Report, appreciated that that Section was important.
The First Report stated:
In order to comply with the provision… the Commission suggested and the Board approved, that the first offers should be so framed as to contain a large proportion of transport units satisfying this need.
That is the need of those operating on a small scale. In the next paragraph the Commission stated that:
Over 2,400 of these vehicles will be in small units of one, two, three or four vehicles without premises.
Table 5, at the back of the Second Report, lists the number of vehicles sold and analyses them according to size of units. It is very interesting to note that 389 vehicles have been sold in units of one vehicle, 950 in units of two vehicles, 690 in units of three and 632 in units of four. That totals 2,661. Admittedly, it appears from the footnote at the bottom of the list that the list is not identical with the vehicles to which paragraph 19 of the First Report refers, but it is interesting to note that the figures are substantially the same, and that the Board and the Commission have carried out what they set out to do. They have disposed of 2,661 vehicles in small units. That seems only to be the fulfilment of a promise—

Mr. J. Harrison: There is one point which I should like the hon. Member to emphasise, so that there shall be no misunderstanding. The Road Haulage Disposal Board disposes of so many small units, but we must not be under the misapprehension that because the Board disposes of small units those units go to small road operators. There is a difference there and I am sure that the hon. Member would not like to deceive us.

Mr. Wilson: I am coming to that point. The Board's obligation was to give opportunity to the small man to come back and the Board did that. That is why we had the list of a large number of small units to which the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) referred. It was to meet that point that the list was prepared.
It is a very creditable result that so many have been sold when one considers the intensive propaganda of hon. Members opposite, who have done everything they can to discourage the small man from going back to business by

frightening him off. It must be remembered that he is the man who would have most difficulty in raising money and would be most likely to be put off by threats of re-nationalisation without compensation. It is admitted very candidly by the Road Haulage Disposal Board, in their Reports, that there was a miscalculation of the number of purchasers of small units who would require premises as well as vehicles. About 73 per cent. of these vehicles have been sold without premises, but only 18 per cent. with premises.
I do not blame the Board for that failure to dispose of vehicles with premises. It might very well have been supposed that very small men would have required premises. As has been revealed in a number of speeches in this debate, in many cases buyers have not been men who were starting in business for the first time or were going back into the industry. They have not been out of it in all respects as a result of nationalisation. They have been largely people who were already in the industry and had a few lorries, but wanted to buy a few more. I see nothing wrong with that. It is a very good thing.
All this disposes of arguments frequently heard in the debates on the Transport Act. We were told that people to whom we would sell the lorries would be inexperienced men who would go into business with insufficient capital and that we should return to the chaos on the roads which it was alleged existed in the early 1920s and 1930s, when men with no capital went on the road with a lorry and took any kind of load in the hope of scraping a living. It is clear that the lorries have not attracted that type of man at all and have not gone for knockdown prices. Far from it.
The Opposition's Motion is based on evidence in the Board's Reports, but there is ample evidence in those Reports that the lorries did not go for knock-down prices. Many tenders were considered to be too low and were not accepted. In List R1, 709 vehicles were offered and 476 were sold and the total of all the highest tenders received showed an overall increase of 42 per cent. over those received for the same units on the first offer. The Second Report adds:
For 31 units the highest tender was more than double.

Mr. Callaghan: Does the hon. Member not realise that the dilemma the Government are in is that if the vehicles are offered at the proper prices they cannot be sold and that if they offer them at knockdown prices they will sell the vehicles?

Mr. Wilson: I suggest that the first units have been small units and have been put up, as it is right that they should have been put up, so that an opportunity should be given to the small man to return to business, as we in the Conservative Party pledged in our Election addresses. That promise has been fulfilled, the opportunity has been given and it has been partially taken. It is right that that opportunity should have been given first. If the giving of that opportunity and the miscalculation to which I have referred have caused a delay of three months, I think that the three months have been well spent.
The Report admits that this mistake will cause some delay, but, of course, so far only the small units have been dealt with. We have not yet reached the company structure. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East made some reference to that point. I do not know quite why he was so worried about it. I myself, and I think many hon. Members, have always been a little doubtful about the wording of Section 5 (3) of the Act. It says:
Where the Commission have made over any property to a company under subsection (1) of this section, they shall proceed to the sale of all the shares thereof as soon as is reasonably practicable, and to that end shall, as soon as is reasonably practicable, by public notice invite tenders for the purchase (in one parcel) of all those shares, on conditions specified …
That means that they have to sell the whole lot at once and is a point with which many hon. Members, I think, do not agree because, to some extent it will complicate the sale. Nevertheless, they think that the company structure will enable a large number of vehicles to be disposed of in a reasonable manner.
Incidentally, the company structure may possibly tie up with the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford, East—who, unfortunately, is not in his place at the moment—because it might provide some opportunity for agreement on long-range policy, and on road transport we might come to a compromise so that it is not constantly being nationalised, denationalised, and renationalised.
So far as the Reports are concerned there are also the 7,000 to 8,000 vehicles referred to on pages 8, 9 and 10 of the Second Report under the heading "Special Traffics, Contract Hire Vehicles and Parcels." From those Reports it is clear that quite a number of vehicles are not included in the lists which have already been submitted, and that many, for one reason or another, are being negotiated for by private contract. In the case of contract hire vehicles it appears that the results have been disappointing, but from the Reports it appears that in some other cases it is anticipated that there will be more purchasers than vehicles.
While, on balance, it must be admitted that the sale has gone more slowly than expected because of difficulties in connection with the sale of vehicles without premises, I think it is absurd that the Opposition's Motion should have been framed in such terms and I hope that the House will reject it.

5.33 p.m.

Mr. James Harrison: The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) has at least told us two things that I have not heard before in these transport debates. The first is that the ex-road haulier was to come back into the business. Yet the hon. Member admits quite definitely that the road haulier who went out of business owing to the nationalisation Act has not come back.

Mr. G. Wilson: I did not quite say that. We have already had an example given in this debate of a road haulier who was nationalised and did not go out of business, but went on to short road haulage. There are quite a number of those—I have several in my constituency and I believe that a number of them are included in those who are coming back.

Mr. Harrison: I would not suggest for one moment that we are speaking about the road haulier who remained in business. One of the main factors behind the Tory move to pass this Act of Parliament was their desire to bring back into business the road haulier who was a road haulier before the nationalisation Act. The hon. Member for Truro admits that that particular return has not been achieved. That is the first thing that I am very pleased to hear him admit this afternoon.
The second thing which he admitted, and it is very important, was that the small man was to come back into the industry. I remember vividly the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) sketching a picture of a lorry being stuck in someone's back yard and the driver and owner taking 10 minutes off for a bit of food and dashing off again. Those were the men we were to get back in the business through this Act. We are now told by the hon. Member for Truro and others that these small men have been given the opportunity, as the Tory leaflet says, but have not come back. From those particular points of view the position is not very satisfactory.
Then we had the pleasurable experience of listening to our right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay). We always listen to him with pleasure, but not always with agreement, because he is an expert, although it is true that it is mainly with ships that his interests lie. As one of his main points he brought out the bogy that integration of transport denies all consumer choice. That argument was previously used time and time again and disproved as many times by everybody who supported the nationalisation Bill. We have not the slightest desire to deprive the ordinary trader of a choice of transport.

Mr. Maclay: I do not wish to interrupt, but this is the key point of my remarks and the key point of the debate. What does integration mean unless, in the long run, it does not eliminate certain methods of transport now available?

Mr. Harrison: We visualise that any trader who desires to send his goods from Nottingham to London by road has the right to specify that he wants his goods to go by road. That selection would be given every consideration and would be carried out under an integrated system.

Mr. Maclay: What about the industrialist, the manufacturer who has to get a piece of machinery quickly to Newcastle-upon-Tyne? How does he get that done, once there is integration? He just does not get it done, and I have warned about that already.

Mr. Harrison: The fallacious argument that integration means lack of choice was

used to discredit the nationalisation Bill. In drawing up that Bill and working it out in detail—and as it proved in operation—we have always stressed the need to give the consumer the right to determine what form of transport should be used. If he selected road rather than rail, and it proved slower or his goods were damaged, we expected the consumer to accept the responsibility of his choice. We say, however, that such a service would mean that ships, lorries and railways would be so integrated as to give the most efficient service to the trader. If the trader selected a special service he did so at his own risk and with our consent. That was our idea of integration—not the red herring of "no consumer choice" that has been used too often, and discredited too often by the specialist, to carry much weight. It is rather late to use that argument.

Mr. Maclay: Thank goodness there is still time before we get such an integrated service, and before consumer choice, in its widest sense, disappears.

Mr. Harrison: Certainly, integration does not mean a complete lack of consumer choice.

Mr. Manuel: Is my hon. Friend not aware that the right hon. Member who is cross-examining him by means of these repeated interventions has destroyed, in the rural parts of his constituency, a service which was given when British Road Transport vehicles came into operation?

Mr. Maclay: Mr. Maclayrose—

Mr. Harrison: The right hon. Gentleman can answer my hon. Friend at some other time.
I should like to refer to something that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) said. To some extent, I share his experiences since we have had this Act denationalising road transport. I have received hardly any complaint about British Road Services since this Act was passed. There has been almost a complete cessation of complaints against British Road Services in the last six months. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West suggested that the reason for that is that the service has improved to such an extent that there is no need to complain.
My explanation is completely different. The fact that I have received no complaints is due to this, that prior to the passing of the denationalisation Act complaints were deliberately created by interested parties to try to damage the reputation of British Road Services, and since the passing of the denationalisation Act there has been no need for such complaints of a political character. The cessation of complaints proves to me that the complainers have achieved what they desired—the breaking up of British Road Services. Those complaints were inspired on political grounds.
To come to the sale of the lorries, only a small number have been sold successfully. Hon. Members opposite suggest that given another six months, we shall have better results. My suggestion is that in the next six months it will become more difficult to sell these lorries than it has been in the first six months of this year, because in six months' time the 25-mile limit on the operation of road hauliers will be lifted, and then it will be possible for anyone to buy a lorry, and go wherever he likes. Surely it is not suggested that a man will buy a second-hand lorry from British Road Services if, in six months' time, he is to be at liberty to run where he likes on a B licence.
As for those lorries which have already been sold, I should like to point out that when assessing the value of a lorry it is not only the value of the actual lorry which has to be taken into consideration, for one has to add to the value of the lorry the value of an A licence. We must bear in mind that today a B licence in the open market—and there is an open market for B licences—is worth about £200, and I suggest that an A licence is worth between £200 and £300, apart from the cost of the vehicle.
Therefore, there is no difficulty, in certain circumstances, in selling some of the lorries to operators already in the business, because to bring into an already established business an extra A licence is worth quite a lot. I suggest that the Ministry should take that factor into account when considering the whole position.
I do not usually read the "Western Mail," but I noticed in today's issue that it is reported that the licensing officer has been very gracious and he has been

convinced that it is necessary to grant some new A licences to general applicants. What I am afraid of is that if the Minister cannot sell the British Road Services lorries fairly satisfactorily—and it will be difficult for him to sell them unsatisfactorily because there is already a provision which makes him accountable for that—another method will be adopted to bring in the private operator, and they will be granting almost ad lib A licences up and down the country for indiscriminate road use, thereby destroying the value of the assets to be disposed of by British Road Services.
That was the report published today in that South Wales newspaper on the granting of these extra licences. If that goes on generally, it will destroy quite a lot of the value of the assets which are being sold, and that point will have to be borne in mind. If the Minister proceeds as he is, without making some modification of the terms of the Act, he will have great difficulty in disposing of the assets of British Road Services during the next six months, and British Road Services will remain as they are at the present time.
It would be disastrous if it were found that the Minister was contemplating, by one means or another, disposing of these assets unreasonably. We are afraid of an unreasonable sale arising from this difficulty, and we want to register that fear in this debate. If we register that fear, we shall probably have done something worth while for the future consideration of the disposal of British Road Services' assets.

5.47 p.m.

Mr. Norman Cole: I hope that the House will have noted the language used by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. J. Harrison) when he spoke about the integration of road transport policy. He said that if a consumer—I emphasise "consumer"—wanted to send goods from Nottingham and decided to send them by road, his request would receive every consideration, and, in another example, he said that if someone wanted to send goods by some novel means he would do so at his own expense and with the consent of the central integrated authority. For a moment I was wondering whether he had been living in this country or in a dictatorship State.

Mr. Thomas Steele: The hon. Gentleman is misusing language.

Mr. Cole: I am not misusing language. I know that far more important even than transport is the right of the ordinary member of the public to make up his own mind.

Mr. J. Harrison: I accept responsibility for the hon. Gentleman's misunderstanding. Probably I did not make myself sufficiently clear. I did not suggest anything about a central committee. What I had in mind was that if a man had a lawnmower in Nottingham—I am exaggerating the case, so that the hon. Gentleman will understand it—and wanted to send it to London by road at once a lorry would be put at his disposal, but he would have to pay for it. If the customer selects the means of transport and desires the speed, and if there is a partial load, we say, "We will take it for him." The customer is right every time, but it will cost him a bit more.

Mr. Cole: I am glad that I have elicited from the hon. Member the admission that the customer is always right. That, at least, is some progress. I am glad to be able to clear his reputation in the minds of the British public by showing that he is not a budding commissar.
In referring to the time taken to sell the first vehicles the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) talked about a period of 14 months, but he knows as well as I do that the period is much shorter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) pointed out, it is only the best part of six months. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East almost brought tears to our eyes when he told us how wrong we were to arraign the British Transport Commission when it had completed its last acquisition only eight months before we took office in October, 1951.

Mr. Manuel: A month before.

Mr. Cole: In this case a matter of only six months has passed since the first effective sale. It is apparently wrong for us to arraign the Commission, but it is not wrong to arraign the Disposal Board for the disposal of these assets. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West in another connection, used the phrase "rash and premature," and

that is the best description one could give of the Motion.
Hon. Members opposite should remember that four years after the passing of the 1947 Act various assets were still being acquired by the Commission. They must bear in mind that it is very much easier to acquire assets than to sell them. In the case of the acquisition of assets the first thing that happens is that vehicles and premises are taken over. The question of compensation follows later. It is true to say that compensation payments for the acquisition of vehicles and premises by the Commission are still being worked out, seven years after the Act was passed. There is also the question of the sanction of law. In the final issue a man had to sell to the Commission, because the law said so.
In this case, on the contrary, the sale of vehicles is taking place in an atmosphere of freedom. No vehicle changes hands until the money is forthcoming from the purchaser. The purchaser, in turn, is free to bid or not to bid, and there is no legal sanction. It is still a free country, despite six years of Socialist Government.
There is a whole world of difference between compulsorily acquiring these vehicles under the 1947 Act and their voluntary purchase by members of the public under the 1953 Act. All those inescapable facts have to be borne in mind, but the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East is moaning—there is no other word to describe his tone—because of the fact that after six months the Disposal Board has sold only 45 per cent. of the vehicles.

Mr. Callaghan: I am not complaining because the vehicles have not been sold: I am delighted. All I was doing was contrasting the slow rate of sale with the foolish optimism of the Minister when he brought the denationalisation Measure before the House.

Mr. Cole: I am sorry that the hon. Member had no better reason to occupy three hours of the time of the House. He was not raising a point of principle in connection with the transport position, but was merely drawing attention to a statement made by my right hon. Friend in the past. I should have thought that we had much better things to do than to put such considerations in the form of a Motion.
I should like to refer to the First Report of the Disposal Board, which was published as long ago as November, 1953. Pointing out the difficulties of the position, the Report says, in paragraph 8:
It would be wrong to think that the disposal by the Commission of its road haulage undertaking (without avoidable disturbance of the transport system of the country and at a reasonable price) is a fairly simple matter capable of extremely quick solution.
If that is not enough, the next paragraph says:
We feel it right, in fairness to the Commission and to prospective purchasers"—
and, it could have added, to the Socialist Party—
to express our clear and unanimous view that the disposal of this undertaking at a proper price and to the proper people cannot be rushed. The Commission assure us that they are endeavouring to carry out their duty of disposing of the existing undertaking as quickly as is reasonably practicable.
That is a clear statement, made as long ago as last November, of the difficulties involved in this process.
What has happened? On the one hand, we had protential purchasers seeking quite properly to obtain these vehicles at the most reasonable prices to themselves, and, on the other, the Board endeavouring to obtain the maximum possible price for the sale of these vehicles. From somewhere between those two very proper endeavours there has emerged the right price for the 6,000 vehicles which have been disposed of. That is a very proper process, and nothing for which any member of the Board could be criticised.
That being so, why are we having this debate today? During the whole six months' course of the Transport Bill in 1952–53 the cry which resounded from the benches opposite was, "Job lots for the boys." It has now been proved beyond a shadow of doubt, by the prices which have been obtained for the vehicles and the integrity of the whole proceeding, that that cry was entirely unfounded and unjustified. We now have the cry, "Abandon the whole procedure." I would ask the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East whether his party talked about "Job lots for the boys" at first because they did not want the vehicles to go back to the public, and now, finding that that

expression of criticism has not been justified, they want the process stopped for reasons which they know best themselves.
Whatever their reasons, I sincerely trust that my right hon. Friend will pursue the duty and responsibility laid upon him by the 1953 Act. I hope that he will go on with this process, which is in keeping with the Government's policy, in other spheres, of restoring national stability, getting rid of rationing, and restoring freedom to the people everywhere. I believe that in one or two years' time hon. Members opposite—who now think that they are having such a wonderful time at the expense of other people—will live to regret the remarks they are making today and will find that the argument behind the Motion has not been justified.

6.0 p.m.

The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Alan Lennox-Boyd): This has been a genuine debate, I think, in the best sense of the term. I do not remember any transport debate in the last two years in which there was so much give and take of a friendly and constructive kind. Who is being educated, I do not know. Let us hope we are all being mutually educated together. I must apologise for getting up now, but I have promised the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. P. Morris) to sit down at a certain time so that he can wind up the debate.
I should like to start my observations, as I told the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) that I should, by once more thanking the British Transport Commission and the Disposal Board for the work that they have done in this field. The Commission has carried out what must be a most unwelcome task with complete fairness, and the Disposal Board, with no precedents whatever to guide it, has discharged its duty with zeal and success. Whatever may be our respective views about the wisdom of the Government, on whom, I recognise, the responsibility alone lies for the action that was taken in the Act of 1953, no one on either side would be churlish enough to charge either of those bodies with not fulfilling their respective rôles admirably.
If I may be allowed another and more personal tribute, I should like to say what a particular pleasure it was to hear my predecessor, my right hon. Friend


the Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay), whose most happy intervention, I think, charmed Members on both sides.

Mr. Manuel: He is blushing.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: My right hon. Friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) launched a series of well aimed torpedoes into the Opposition's conception of transport integration and into the very illogical basis on which their Motion is founded.
I would straightway deal with one point that has nothing to do with the Motion but which was raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. J Harrison), for I think that that would be a good idea. The hon. Gentleman, apparently having strayed away from his normal tea table, picked up a piece of information that, I must say, leaves me a little dumbfounded. He said that somebody was suggesting that there might be a widespread granting of A licences which would have the effect of making the existing A licences of less value in the market or to the owners, whether the Commission or the private operators.
I am at a loss to understand how that most inconceivable rumour could have arisen. There could be no question of the licensing authorities, who are independent authorities, taking any action of that kind with an eye on the Act for which I was responsible. As I try to carry out my responsibilities under the Act scrupulously, neither twisting it nor defying its spirit—no doubt, the process of disposal could be speeded up if that were done—so do the licensing authorities, under the two Acts that govern their actions, pay scrupulous regard to those statutes.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East began by poking some perfectly proper fun at the relatively slow process of the disposal business. I think it is reasonable that we should at this review of the work of the Disposal Board and of the disposal procedure in general cast a glance for one moment at the respective difficulties of nationalisation and of

denationalisation. Though, of course, I could argue—it has indeed, been suggested—that it is much easier to do mischief than to undo it, it is not only on that legitimate ground that I am going to suggest that there are one or two differences.
Considering the process of nationalisation of transport, and the measure of denationalisation in one part of the last Act, from the point of view of getting vehicles into the hands of the people who are going to operate them, nationalisation is bound to be quicker and easier, since the question of compensation, which was guaranteed by the Government, can be settled at leisure after the vehicles have changed hands. As against that, the disposal of vehicles on denationalisation must be an operation complete in itself, with the price to be settled and the ability of the buyer to produce the cash ascertained by actual receipt of the money at the time that the transaction takes place and the vehicles are handed over. That means a wealth of difference between the two problems.

Mr. Collick: If the Minister was right, when he introduced his Measure, in his anticipation that there would be such a demand for these vehicles, why is there any difficulty in finding the money?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am not suggesting that there is any difficulty in finding the money, but a great deal of preliminary work has to be gone through to satisfy the Commission and the Disposal Board that the applicant is in a position to honour his bond. It is a very different matter to deal with compensation guaranteed by the Government.
There is this further difference as well. The prices to be obtained for the units have to be subject to the process of public tender, followed by careful consideration of the bids put in, all of which is naturally a slower process than nationalisation, which leaves all these troublesome matters to be settled afterwards and at leisure. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East might, I think, have mentioned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South reminded him, that the acquisition of road haulage undertakings started in 1948 and went on till the end of 1951, and yet it was a much easier procedure. When I say, as I am entitled to say, that the troublesome


matters under nationalisation can be settled at leisure, there has been quite a delay in getting them settled in a number of cases.
I am not making any charge, because I know the extraordinary complexity of this business, and I know that some of the problems confronting the Commission with people who still want more money to be paid thorn depend on legal actions that cannot be unduly hurried. So I am not making a charge of any kind, but it is, of course, a fact that there are some cases of acquisitions that were completed in 1951 in which compensation has not yet been settled. How much easier and quicker it is to nationalise when the compensation is guaranteed by the Government than it is to denationalise, when each operation must be a complete business in itself. The fact that the task is a complicated one is no reason why it should not be tackled if the result is highly desirable.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, South-East and one or two other hon. Members wanted to know when the disposal process is coming to an end. As everybody knows, I think, who has followed the Act and the transactions under it, the Act itself lays down no time limit to the disposal procedure, but I readily recognise that the provisions relating to the ending of the 25-mile limit at the end of this year, and the obligation on me by 30th September to make a provisional estimate of the road haulage capital loss, led hon. Members and others to think that the process of disposal would be well advanced by the end of this year. Though I shall be very careful not to give estimates, I do not think that that was a wrong anticipation, and I think that it will not be all that out in the event. I shall be in a better position to answer the hon. Gentleman, I think, in the autumn, by which time the small-man demand will, I think, have been met, probably completely, and a start will have been made with offering the vehicles in larger groups.
The hon. Gentleman, quite properly, chided me with one or two optimistic observations I made about the speed with which the disposal could be carried out. It is not altogether surprising if in about 250 speeches in this Chamber I made one or two remarks that, one thinks on closer examination a yeas or so later,

could have been more happily expressed. Is it altogether wise of hon. Members to complain of the delay? Perhaps I took some notice of the speeches which were made when I suggested that this would be a relatively speedy procedure. I remember the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) saying, "Do it gradually." I can stil hear his confidential voice saying:
Do it gradually. Do it as any sensible man would do it, in such a way as to get the best price according to the market at the time.
On 4th February, 1953, the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East said to the House:
We do not see any disadvantage in delay.
Then, speaking for trade and industry, he said:
They do not mind whether the process of transferring these from public to private ownership takes nine months or three years if they can be assured that this network of services and the efficient organisation will not be broken down in a mad rush to get hold of lorries at the cheapest price."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th February, 1954; Vol. 510, c. 1881–96.]

Mr. David Jones: Why does not the right hon. Gentleman admit that his friends of the Road Haulage Association have let him down? He said on 3rd December in the House:
The questionnaire put out by the Road Haulage Association among their 17,000 members … elicited only 2,000 replies. Those 2,000 replies gave an indication of an interest in some 10,000 vehicles.… We have had many indications to suggest that considerably more will be forthcoming to apply for these transport units."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd December, 1952; Vol. 508, c. 1589.]
Why does not the right hon. Gentleman admit that he was badly advised?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I think if I attempted to answer that question at any length it would prevent me from answering the debate which has taken place. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the ingenuity with which he has made his speech after all.
If I had been ready to twist the spirit of the Act, no doubt it could have been hurried a good deal, as it could if I had been ready to disregard the provisions in the Act that there should be no avoidable disturbance of the transport system of the country. We are entitled to say that a substantial operation involving the payment in cash of £7½ million in the first few months of the disposal has led


to no serious disturbance of the transport of the country, and where there are local difficulties they are likely to be only temporary. But by some curious Socialist reasoning, the fact that there has been no disturbance and that the British Road Services have done remarkably well is used as an argument for abandoning the Act.
Despite all the wild accusations which roamed about before, no suggestion has been made in the debate that anything underhand has happened in this major operation which, had it not been in scrupulous hands—talking about the Commission and the Disposal Board and, I hope, myself—could so easily have lent itself to something sinister and corrupt. When I hear hon. Members today using very extravagant language to describe their fears of what will happen, I am a shade distrustful, for I remember the language which they used about what would happen as soon as disposal started.

Mr. Manuel: Mr. Manuelrose—

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am sorry. I cannot give way.
"Muddle and confusion for industry," said the hon. and learned Member for Kettering. "A raw deal for taxpayers." "Throwing 40,000 lorries on the market at bargain prices," said the right hon. Member for East Ham, South (Mr. Barnes). "Very near corruption," said the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), and "foreign to the British way of life." "Barefaced robbery," said the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Popplewell). The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East said, "The boys are already looking round for pickings." "The jackals are out," said the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price).
Everybody was going to gang up over helpless British industry and to make corrupt deals behind closed doors. Even the smaller companies which were to be formed, or the larger ones, were, according to the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East, to be no more than financial marionettes dancing to Mr. Gibson Jarvie's tune. What has happened to all these prophecies? I hope I may be forgiven the language if I say, in the words of the poet:
In the name of the Prophet—figs!

Mr. Callaghan: The Minister appreciates, of course, that the lorries on which Mr. Gibson Jarvie loaned money are still his property until those who have nominally bought them have paid off the last instalment.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If the hon. Member examines the whole of the transaction he will find that the rôle of the finance houses has been extraordinarily modest in the transaction so far.
I said all along that, providing that a good Disposal Board was appointed, and with the people likely to be sitting on the Transport Commission—and this applies just as much to Lord Hurcomb as to General Sir Brian Robertson—it was inconceivable that this business would not be carried out in a proper and honourable way. I said that the law would be scrupulously observed, and the taxpayers' interests continually protected. I recognised that what was unwelcome to the Commission would be honourably carried out, and I made various observations of this kind.
They were all disregarded, but it is interesting to read now in a recent issue of "Motor Transport," under the signature of the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies):
The Board and the Commission could lower their sights. They have quite rightly refused to do so, and justify their refusal by standing by the Act's requirements that a reasonable price would be obtained.
Had any of these wild accusations been justified, the opposition would then have been able to move a very vigorous vote of censure on the Government which had allowed that situation to come about. The Motion on the Paper is based in part on what is thought to be the conclusions to be drawn from the Second Report of the Road Haulage Disposal Board—on the facts disclosed; and the use of the phrase "the facts disclosed," if read outside by the general public who might not have read these for themselves, would suggest that there is something sinister disclosed in the Report.
What does it show? It shows that of the first seven lists of units offered for sale, 45 per cent, of all the vehicles have been sold. The hon. Member for Enfield, East said, "The sights have not been lowered." That is, 6,000 in all. While only 18 per cent, of the vehicles


with premises have been sold, 73 per cent. of the vehicles offered without premises have been sold. This is in the preliminary work of disposal, with Lists 1 and 2 having been avowedly experimental and the Board and the Commission feeling their way.
Of course, the relatively low figure of 45 per cent. for the whole field compared with the high figure of 73 per cent. of vehicles sold when offered without premises is due to the fact that there has been very little demand for the vehicles with premises. As the Board explain in its Report, with each of the premises it was necessary to offer a sufficient number of vehicles to make an economic unit. This has meant that a high proportion of the total vehicles offered has been in units with premises. Of the 13,200 vehicles offered, 8,400 have been vehicles offered with premises. As only 18 per cent. of those have been sold, it has pulled down the overall figure.
It is clear that the disposals are attracting, in the main, existing operators who already have premises and who are enlarging their fleet. They are not necessarily big men; as has been pointed out, many of them may be small men who are entering the long-distance field through the provisions of an unrestricted A licence.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East asked me how many of the vehicles had been sold to people at present operating in the industry and how many to newcomers or re-entrants. The Commission tells me that there are no available figures of the numbers of vehicles sold to existing operators, re-entrants and newcomers, respectively, but it has managed to classify the successful tenderers, and that will go some way to give the hon. Member the information which he wants.
I recognise that there is a lesson to be learned from these figures, but I would point out that, when we talk about existing A and B hauliers, many of them may be people in quite a small way who have been restricted under the present legislation and who are now taking advantage of the automatic A licence to expand their activities. The figures are in respect of the first five lists: to existing A and B hauliers 647; to A and B hauliers whose businesses were taken over in whole or in part 165; to completely new entrants to the industry 63; to C operators 30; to

passenger vehicle operators 14; and 39 are classified as unclassified, if I may use that Irish phrase.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East read out lists from Cardiff and Stratford in ones and twos and said that this was not the sale of the businesses which the House had been promised. He neglected to point out, in the words of the Disposal Board, that of the first 10 lists those lists were almost entirely designed to meet the requirements of the small man and the larger businesses are now coming along.
There are points on prices which I should like to have dealt with. I have not been asked many questions about prices, surprisingly enough, but I should like to make one or two observations. There is always bound to be disagreement between someone who is selling and someone who is buying as to the appropriateness of individual prices. The only satisfactory way—and that is not entirely watertight—is to have an arbitrator. Here we have the Disposal Board, whose duty it is to see that the price is the best possible price from the point of view of the national interest, and fair to the seller and fair to the buyer.
The Board cannot have a reserve price for obvious reasons which I need not give to the House. No one has suggested that it should. The only advance figure available to it is the Commission's combined valuation of the vehicle and the A licence. This is a very useful guide indeed to the Board. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Norman Smith) said, an A licence is a very valuable thing indeed. The Board has to decide what would be a reasonable price for a given unit in the light of the information which it has from the Commission, and in the light of the quality of the bidding for that unit and any other consideration that emerged when it examined the list of units and the tenders made.
I think it will be agreed that the Board cannot settle a price before it sees the bidding clearly. It is right that the bidding should be a major factor, but not the overruling factor in deciding what prices are reasonable. To those who feel that if the Commission and Board had lowered their sights there would have been more sales, in fairness to both I should like to say that I have myself with great care, and with them, examined what


would have happened had they been lower, and I am satisfied that there would not have been a substantially greater number of vehicles sold, unless the Board had been prepared to accept prices so low as to be quite indefensible.
There are other points which, no doubt, at Question time and in other debates on this question of prices I may be asked about, and I will do my best to deal with all of them, although naturally this is a running and continuing transaction and it would not be proper for me to disclose to the House and to the public -at any one stage particular negotiations that the Commission or the Disposal Board may, under the terms of the Act, be carrying out.
There are some observations which I should like to make, dealing with the concluding remarks of the hon. Gentleman, about future policy. The Disposal Board has dealt in its Report very carefully with future policy in a number of clearly-written paragraphs. It has taken first the position of the small operator. Seven lists have now been dealt with and the List R3 has been issued, and List 7 will be published on 28th July. In all, there will have been 10 lists, which have been designed almost entirely to meet the requirements of the small man, and 15,000 vehicles will, under these lists, have been offered.
On the available evidence, both the Commission and the Board feel that this is about the maximum which needs to be set aside to satisfy the requirements of Section 3 of the Act that the small man has a reasonable chance of re-entering the business. While they have been doing these first lists, both the Commission and the Board have been active in preparing the way for disposals in larger groups. A list is to be published on 14th July of 50 units with premises, the majority of which are medium or large groups and, as I think the House knows, the sale of large groups is possible under the Act either as units, although I have to give my consent in every case if there are more than 50 vehicles if the unit principle is followed, or by company groups, in which case, normally, I would not come into the picture.
Finally, with regard to future policy, there remains the question of the very

large, extensive and, I recognise, admirable parcels and smalls service of British Road Services. A great number of other firms before nationalisation also gave in their own localities valuable service in this field.

Mr. Manuel: Not in the Highlands of Scotland.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It is proposed, if we look at the Disposal Board's Report, to dispose of the bulk of the parcels and smalls organisation intact. There has been a demand for a few hundred vehicles, parcels and smalls—I think 460 is not enough to disrupt the service—and these will be made available in small units, but the main bulk of parcels and smalls will be disposed of under satisfactory conditions, if forthcoming, intact.
The Commission now inform me that it has had further discussions with the Disposal Board and has formally agreed that the best course under the circumstances is for the whole of the property used in connection with the parcels network, other than the parts hived off, to be transferred to one company with a view to the shares being sold in accordance with Section 5 of the Act of 1953. Although it is not for me to take action in the matter—this is entirely within their discretion—I think that it has arrived at a wise solution.
I am conscious that I have not been able to deal with all the points which have been raised. I also recognise that there are many other opportunities which, no doubt, will be freely taken for hon. Members to cross-question me. The basis of the Opposition Motion is the facts disclosed in the Report and the success of British Road Services. I hope that I have shown that the facts disclosed certainly do not warrant the interpretation placed upon them in general, but not in particular, by hon. Members opposite on the success of British Road Services this year, and I think that they would themselves welcome the new competition which they are getting which can scarcely be said to be a justification for undoing the Act. As I have said, we were prepared to face the inevitable disturbances caused, but we have not been prepared to undo the Act, and I hope that in the light of these circumstances the House will reject the Motion.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. Percy Morris: I am glad to see that the Minister has recovered his good-humour, because his face and that of his Parliamentary Secretary were very grim during the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan). The bouyancy which was such a characteristic of the demeanour and speeches of the right hon. Gentleman during the debates on the Bill in 1953 seem to have completely disappeared. He was only able to smile when my hon. Friend suggested that it might be a good exchange if he changed places with the Minister of Education.
This afternoon the Minister has completely failed to answer the grave indictment made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East. The chastened tenor of his speech revealed him in an entirely new light. He is obviously a little sensitive and conscious that he has been batting on a very poor wicket. I can understand the right hon. Gentleman's failure. The dictum attributed to the late. C. P. Scott. of the "Mancheser Guardian," still holds good: "Comment is free, facts are sacred." Those adduced by my hon. Friend are incontrovertible, and the Minister has failed to refute them.
The right hon. Gentleman must be grateful to the author of the Second Report of the Road Haulage Disposal Board for coming a phrase which enables him to describe a scheme that has failed as one that has had moderate success. The irony of the situation is heightened by contrasting the very limited degree of moderate success with the overwhelming success of British Road Services during the past 12 months, although management and staff have been working under difficulties in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
Major G. N. Russell, the competent chairman of the Road Services Board, addressed a meeting of the Merseyside and District section of the Institute of Transport in February last. Among other things he said:
I am glad to say that we have had quite remarkable improvements over the last three years. Whereas the road accident rate in the country is increasing, ours is very substantially decreasing….
In the first place, the number of loaded miles per vehicle has increased by nearly 20 per cent. in the last two years. Our maintenance costs in terms of pence-per-mile were lower in

1953 than in 1952, in spite of heavy increases in wages and the cost of materials.…
We have absorbed the increases in wages and costs which have taken place since our last modest increase of 5 per cent. in charges over a year ago and yet our trading surplus for 1953 will prove to be some £7 million or more.
Major Russell may be charged with being a biased witness in favour of his own cause, but quite recently we had details of a sample survey conducted by the Minister's own Department. In a paper addressed to the Royal Statistical Society by two of the Minister's statisticians, it was made abundantly clear that the 39,000 vehicles of the British Road Services were doing work equal to that of the 116,000 vehicles operating under private enterprise.
If further evidence is required of the confidence of the public in British Road Services, one can turn again to the Second Report of the Road Haulage Disposal Board. In paragraph 39, the Board points out:
The Commission own some 2,900 vehicles which operate under a contract of hire for a particular customer.
In accordance with the terms of the Act, the Commission wrote to those people and pointed out what the Commission was expected to do and asked, "If we are able to dispose of this contract vehicle, are you prepared to transfer the contract and to be served by somebody else?" Of 2,900, only 600 availed themselves of the opportunity; 2,300 preferred to remain with British Road Services.
Despite the eloquence of the Minister this afternoon, he has evaded the one cardinal point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East. Referring to the forecast by the Minister that there would be a queue of people waiting to acquire the vehicles, that they would soon be disposed of and that the public were yearning for a private transport service, my hon. Friend pointed out that that had not happened. He asked why it had not happened, and we are still waiting for a reply.
The scheme has failed for two reasons. First, because it was conceived in ignorance and born in prejudice, and, I must add, wilful ignorance. These may seem harsh terms, but let me prove my case. The Minister spurned the advice of every competent expert in the transport industry. The legacy of knowledge and


experience gained by men like the late Lord Stamp, Lord Ashfield, Sir Frank Pick, Mr. William Whitelaw and others did not interest him. He rejected the counsel of Lord Hurcomb, who is regarded as an international authority and who served Governments for nearly 40 years at the Ministry of Transport and Shipping. The cumulative experience of Sir Eustace Missenden, Lord Latham, Sir John Elliot and many others was of no avail. The Minister's only objective was to repay a political debt to the Road Haulage Association. The men whom I have mentioned devoted the whole of their time and talent to a study of transport. They eschewed politics, and consequently the Minister regarded them as hostile witnesses.
In his speech this afternoon, the Minister said that we ought not to complain about the slow progress in the disposal of vehicles because, after all, the acquisitions occupied a period from 1948 to 1951 and he thought that that was reasonable. If so, was it not very unreasonable in 1952 to denounce British Road Services because they had not achieved tremendous success before they had had time to put their house in order? Lest I forget, I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the Commission and to the members of the Road Haulage Disposal Board. It ought to be pointed out that the second body is really an approval and supervisory body, as mentioned in its Report. It is not responsible for the sales. The initiative and the work of disposing of the vehicles rests with the Commission, with the men whose advice was rejected altogether, and it reflects very much credit upon them that they have been able to serve the Minister with such loyalty and efficiency.
The Transport Commission ventured to tell the Minister two things: first that he was pursuing a mistaken policy; and second, that the methods of implementation that he had in mind were unworkable. These two criticisms have proved to be correct. "Modern Transport" warned the right hon. Gentleman in its issue of 19th July, 1952—two years ago—that:
This, of course, is nothing more nor less than a gamble, at a time when the country is in no state to take such a risk. The Commission may well be left with some 15,000 or 20,000 vehicles on the least remunerative services.

The "Economist" a week earlier, on financial grounds, said:
It would be a wise course for the Government to do some hard thinking on transport policy before it is too late.
All this was like water on a duck's back so far as the Minister was concerned.
If further evidence is needed, I quote from an inquiry presided over by a gentleman then known as Sir Arthur Salter. The inquiry came to this conclusion: We must recognise that the existence of so many small units in the Road Haulage Industry increases the difficulty of bringing about permanent co-ordination between it and other forms of transport.
The Minister not only rejected sound advice, but failed to inform himself of the actual facts. As far as I know, he has not visited a single one of the 1,500 depots, workshops, etc., throughout the country. He did not have the remotest idea of what was going on.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Mr. Lennox-Boydindicated dissent.

Mr. Morris: When the Prime Minister was speaking in the debate on the White Paper, primed, presumably, by the Minister, he clothed the figures by saying that the Road Haulage Executive had built up a gigantic headquarters staff of 12,384 clerks.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If I do not interrupt, it is not that I accept as true what the hon. Member said about me. It is not so at all.

Mr. Morris: The right hon. Gentleman can refer to HANSARD. The point he is making, I presume, is that he did not give the figures to the Prime Minister.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I did not know the hon. Member was going to move on to a larger quarry. I thought he was going to continue to talk about me. When he said I have not been to the depots and met the people, that is just not so.

Mr. Morris: I shall be very happy to give way if the right hon. Gentleman will tell us where he went, when he went and how many he visited.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I certainly went on two different occasions to different sets of depots, some of them in the South of England and some around London. I saw a great number of people which is


the way I had to deal with it under the high pressure of the time. It was the only satisfactory way of learning all points of view.

Mr. Morris: If the right hon. Gentleman said he could not go because of pressure of work I would accept that, but when he says he went on one or two occasions when there are 1,500 depots throughout the length of Britain and that he had a clear picture of the position, I say that that is really deceiving the House.
May I resume my reference to what he has described as the larger quarry? The Prime Minister got up and accused the Road Haulage Executive of having set up a gigantic headquarters with over 12,384 clerks. The actual number was less than 300. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East challenged the accuracy of these figures the Minister himself said that they were taken from the Report of the B.T.C. He discovered later on that the figure of 12,384 covered the whole of the professional, technical, administrative and managerial staff employed throughout the whole country. We had the unusual experience of the Road Haulage Executive having to write a corrected statement to the Press. It is not surprising that after such muddled thinking the Minister is faced with the dilemma that we are discussing today.
My hon. Friend has given details of the lists. There were five original lists and two lists containing the rejects offering altogether over 13,500 vehicles, but only 5,773 have been sold. Two other lists have been circulated and four others are in the process of preparation. Some vehicles have been advertised on several lists because they have failed to find purchasers. Including those re-advertised, 20,000 vehicles have been offered for sale and less than 6,000 have been sold. In view of this, how can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that the majority of the vehicles will be sold by the late autumn?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I gave no such assurance. What I said was that by the late autumn the demand among small men should have been satisfied. If I am asked what I mean by "small men" I will say the man with a few lorries, not with large businesses. But I do not think an interpretation clause is required for

such a simple matter. I also added that by the autumn the process of disposing of the larger units would have started. We would, therefore, be in a much more suitable position to see in what way progress is going.

Mr. Percy Shurmer: Is Mr. Smith a small man?

Mr. Morris: The right hon. Gentleman on this occasion preferred not to make any forecast, and we are delighted that he has profited from his experience on an earlier occasion. We venture to tell him he will not have sold the majority of these vehicles by the autumn. If we prove correct will he make up his mind that it is high time to call it a day and say to British Road Services, "You have won, you carry on," and the people of the country will benefit?
It has already been pointed out that two-thirds of the vehicles sold were purchased by existing hauliers now operating within the 25-mile limit. I only want to refer to one aspect of that. How does the right hon. Gentleman check the man who buys an additional vehicle in order to have the benefit of the extra 25 miles? In fact, it has given him an opportunity for evasion because it is difficult to check these vehicles in any way. It simply means that the right hon. Gentleman has made it easier for the unscrupulous haulier in the transport industry.
The Act of 1953 also permits the reassignment of vehicles by successful tenderers. A man having bought a vehicle is not bound to operate it. He can sell it again and be content with the profit from the sale. In fact, as the records show, considerable reassignment is taking place. There is also evidence that permission has been given for changing the operating base, and this is bound to result in unremunerative routes being left with reduced road services, or, perhaps, no services at all, particularly in places like the Highlands of Scotland and the remote parts of Wales.
We have heard this afternoon that the profit of British Road Services in 1953 is likely to be near £8 million. Despite the fact that they have had such a measure of success, the Minister feels he ought to continue to dispose of their assets.
I want to say one word about the staff. I am very glad that the members of the


Road Haulage Disposal Board in their Report—no—I think it was the Joint Consultative Council according to what my trade union colleagues tell me—paid tribute to the efficiency and loyalty of the staff during the past 12 months. I hope the Minister appreciates that these men, who are faced with insecurity because they cannot be given any superannuation provisions, sick pay or holiday conditions, may be on the market looking for a job.
When I asked the right hon. Gentleman to do his best to ensure that the men who are made redundant are employed in conditions equal to those provided by British Road Services, he dismissed me with a wave of the hand and said, "That is the work of the trade unions." He made no reply when I pointed out that, under private enterprise, of the 17,000 administrative staff only 3,000 were covered in the negotiations conducted by the trade unions. He is content to leave the present staff to go back to conditions of that kind, but despite the difficulties facing them the stall has rendered loyal and efficient service. The Minister ought to recognise it and reach a final decision and acknowledge that it is hopeless to be able to dispose of these assests in a satisfactory way.
What is the right hon. Gentleman's greatest dilemma at the moment? He is waiting for the Road Haulage Disposal Board, after conferring with the Commission, to submit to him the lists of people who are interested in what one might term bulk purchase which covers presumably fleets of more than 50 vehicles. It was discreet on the right hon. Gentleman's part to ignore the remark made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South-East when he said that there were City interests, financial bodies and people waiting in the wings interested in transport. They have suddenly discovered the shocking thing that a Government Department can run a business and make nearly £8 million profit. That from their point of view is a scandal.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: If the hon. Gentleman went to the next luncheon of the British Transport Commission and called it a Government depot he would be rather surprised at its reaction.

Mr. Morris: The dialectic skill of the Minister will not detract the House from the truth of what I am saying. If the British Transport Commission could convince him that the Government ought not to bother it it would be in a very much happier frame of mind. But for his particular purpose he regards it as one of his most useful Government Departments.
These City interests have suddenly become alive to the fact that British Road 'Services have made nearly £8 million profit last year and given a proper opportunity, could make an even greater profit. In fact, the position up to July of this year is equally promising.
That being so, they say, "That ought not to be left in the hands of the Government, it ought to come into our hands." The ironical feature is that they want the B.T.C. to do the work and they will take the dividends and profits. What answer has the right hon. Gentleman given to that? Why does he ignore that fundamental point in the speech of my hon. Friend? The fact is that the Tory pattern is being repeated over and over again and, so far as transport is concerned, a desperate effort is being made to restore it to private interests, despite the fact that when they had it in their own hands, both railways and road transport, they became bankrupt concerns. When we are debating the issue of the railways in a coming debate, the right hon. Gentleman will be reminded of that fact.
I would remind the House that in his very chastened mood this afternoon the right hon. Gentleman has found it convenient to evade arguments, to dodge facts, and to content himself by making a speech which was nothing more than a repetition in his own language of the Second Report of the Road Haulage Disposal Board. He might as well have said, "Mr. Speaker, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen need not listen to me if they will read the Second Report. That is all the information I have." For he did not amplify it in any way and, what is more disappointing, he has completely failed to make the slightest suggestion or give us the slightest encouragement as to what will happen by the end of the year. I ask the right hon. Gentleman once more, how long is this going on? By 1st January, 1955, the 25-mile limit will be abolished. Is he going to tell us at the


end of the year, "I have sold them all," or "I have not sold them"? If the Minister will do that, we shall know where we stand.
But let me be fair to the Road Haulage Executive. They have done a splendid job in spite of great difficulties and in record time. They are proving themselves to be of tremendous value to this country, and yet the Minister persists in trying to destroy a service which has proved to be a great national asset.

Mr. David Renton: Is the hon. Gentleman familiar with the fact that in List 1 the British Transport Commission made perhaps the only serious mistake it has made over this disposal, in that it included a large number of vehicles, some of which had not been on the road for months, in fact a good many were pre-war vehicles? And, when he is praising the Commission, he should bear in mind that the process of disposal was not helped by the selection of the vehicles in List 1.

Mr. Morris: All those facts were known to the right hon. Gentleman when he decided to hand the vehicles over to private enterprise. He had been complaining about the long nature of the process, but he must have anticipated that, and he should have been aware of the difficulties that we experienced when we took over vehicles that were almost—[An HON MEMBER: "Obsolete."]—unworthy of the road.

Mr. Renton: The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that those facts were known to my right hon. Friend and he trusted the Commission in this matter. The interesting thing is, however, that the existence of that trash amongst the vehicles was always denied by hon. Gentlemen opposite.

Mr. Morris: In conclusion, I say to the Minister that he is destroying an organisation which has proved to be a great national asset for the public and the trading and business community of this country. A Minister who, for political expediency deliberately destroys a national asset, forfeits the confidence of the country, and a Government that permit him to do such a thing, in spite of all the facts that have been revealed in the Reports, have not got the confidence of the country. We are still able to remind right hon. Gentlemen opposite

that we had more votes than they did at the last General Election, and when the facts that we have dealt with this afternoon are known to the British public, they will realise once more that their greatest friends on Government Benches are those who now sit on Opposition Benches, and I declare on behalf of the party that, so far as we are concerned, we shall not hesitate to re-nationalise the services when we get the opportunity.

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, may I reply to one of his questions? I should not like it thought that I had deliberately avoided an answer to the question that he reiterated, first asked by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan), about suggestions which they said might have been made that there could be a partnership between the British Transport Commission and some private interests in varying proportions, the management being left to the B.T.C. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Act provides that the shares of a company must be disposed of in one parcel. It would have been technically possible within the Act for the British Transport Commission to divest itself of the shares to some private purchaser and to buy back a proportion of the shares—[An HON. MEMBER: "Good Lord!"] I say, it would be possible, but I would regard that as defying the spirit of the Act and I would not approve of it. That is my answer to what he asked, and I hope it has cleared up the point raised by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Popplewell: Would the Minister say whether he would have approved a proposal that allowed the British Transport Commission to own 51 per cent. of the shares with managerial functions, and the outside interests 49 per cent.?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: No, I am sorry that the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. Popplewell) has not followed my remarks. The whole purpose of my intervention was to make it plain that although it might be possible so to work that part, and it could be done within the framework of the Act, I would regard that as defying the spirit of the Act and I would not approve of it.

Mr. Callaghan: In that case, when shall we have an amending Act to deal with the 20,000 vehicles the Minister will not be able to sell?

Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Then the hon. Gentleman admits, no doubt, the speech made by the hon. Member for Bradford, East which was full of an appeal for a bi-partisan approach to transport, although he himself dealt with the matter in a somewhat different way when saying that there would be no co-operation in the unlikely event of an amending Act being necessary?

Mr. Morris: But my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, East (Mr. McLeavy) made the wrong assumption that the approach made by the Government was on commonsense lines.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 264; Noes, 294.

Division No. 187.]
AYES
[6.58 p.m.


Acland, Sir Richard
Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)
Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.


Adams, Richard
Fernyhough, E.
Logan, D. G.


Albu, A. H.
Fienburgh, W.
MacColl, J. E.


Allan, Arthur (Bosworth)
Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)
McGhee, H. G.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Follick, M.
McGovern, J.


Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)
Foot, M. M.
Mcinnes, J.


Attlee, Rt Hon. C. R.
Forman, J. C.
McKay, John (Wallsend)


Awbery, S. S.
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
McLeavy, F.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Freeman, John (Watford)
Mainwaring, W. H.


Baird, J.
Freeman, Peter (Newport)
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)


Balfour, A.
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)


Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.
Gibson, C. W.
Mann, Mrs. Jean


Bartley, P.
Glanville, James
Manuel, A. C.


Beattie, J.
Gooch, E. G.
Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Mason, Roy


Bence, C. R.
Greenwood, Anthony
Mayhew, C. P.


Benn, Hon. Wedgwood
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.
Mellish, R. J.


Benson, G.
Grey, G. F.
Messer, Sir F.


Beswick, F.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Mikardo, Ian


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)
Griffiths, William (Exchange)
Mitchison, G. R.


Bing, G. H. C.
Hale, Leslie
Monslow, W.


Blackburn, F.
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Moody, A. S.


Blenkinsop, A.
Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)
Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.


Blyton, W. R.
Hamilton, W. W.
Morley, R.


Boardman, H.
Hannan, W.
Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G
Hardy, E. A.
Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)


Bowden, H. W.
Hargreaves, A.
Mort, D. L.


Bowles, F. G.
Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)
Moyle, A.


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Hastings, S.
Mulley, F. W.


Brockway, A. F.
Hayman, F. H.
Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon P. J


Brook, Dryden (Halifax)
Healey, Denis (Leeds, S.E.)
O'Brien, T.


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Healy, Cahir (Fermanagh)
Oldfield, W. H.


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Rowley Regis)
Oliver, G. H.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Herbison, Miss M.
Orbach, M.


Burke, W. A.
Hewitson, Capt. M.
Oswald, T.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)
Hobson, C. R.
Padley, W. E.


Callaghan, L. J.
Holman, P.
Paget, R. T.


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Holmes, Horace
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)


Champion, A. J.
Houghton, Douglas
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Hoy, J. H.
Palmer, A. M. F.


Clunie, J.
Hubbard, T. F.
Pannell, Charles


Coldrick, W.
Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)
Pargiter, G. A.


Collick, P. H.
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Parker, J.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Parkin, B. T


Cove, W. G.
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)
Paton, J.


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)
Pearson, A.


Crosland, C. A. R.
Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)
Peart, T. F.


Crossman, R. H. S.
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.
Plummer, Sir Leslie


Cullen, Mrs. A.
Janner, B.
Popplewell, E.


Daines, P.
Jeger, George (Goole)
Porter, G.


Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Jeger, Mrs. Lena
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)


Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)
Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)
Proctor, W. T.


Davies, Harold (Leek)
Jones, David (Hartlepool)
Pryde, D. J.


Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)
Pursey, Cmdr. H.


de Freitas, Geoffrey
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)
Rankin, John


Deer, G.
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)
Reid, Thomas (Swindon)


Delargy, H. J.
Keenan, W.
Reid, William (Camlachie)


Dodds, N. N.
Kenyon, C.
Rhodes, H.


Donnelly, D. L.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W
Richards, R.


Driberg, T. E. N.
King, Dr H. M.
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.


Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Kinley, J.
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Edelman, M.
Lawson, G. M.
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Ross, William


Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Royle, C.


Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)
Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Shackleton, E. A. A.


Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Lindgren, G. S.
Shawcross, Rt. Hon Sir Hartley




Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Sylvester, G. O.
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Short, E. W.
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Shurmer, P. L. E.
Taylor, John (West Lothian)
Wigg, George


Silverman, Julius (Erdington)
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Thomas, George (Cardiff)
Wilkins, W. A.


Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)
Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)
Willey, F. T.


Skeffington, A, M.
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)
Williams, David (Neath)


Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)
Thornton, E.
Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)


Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)
Timmons, J.
Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'll'y)


Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Tomney, F.
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Smith, Norman (Nottingham, S.)
Turner-Samuels, M.
Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, J.)


Snow, J. W.
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn
Willis, E. G.


Sorensen, R. W.
Usborne, H. C.
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Viant, S. P.
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Sparks, J. A.
Warbey, W. N.
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


Steele, T.
Watkins, T. E.
Wyatt, W. L.


Stokes, Rt. Hon. R. R.
Weitzman, D.
Yates, V. F.


Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)
Wells, William (Walsall)



Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.
West, D. G.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Swingler, S. T.
Wheeldon, W. E.
Mr. Wallace and




Mr. James Johnson.




NOES


Aitken, W. T.
Davies, Rt. Hn. Clement (Montgomery)
Hollis, M. C.


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
De la Bére, Sir Rupert
Holt, A. F.


Alport, G. J. M.
Deedes, W. F.
Hope, Lord John


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Digby, S. Wingfield
Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry


Amory, Rt. Hon. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Hornsby Smith, Miss M. P.


Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Horobin, I. M.


Arbuthnot, John
Doughty, C. J. A.
Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)


Astor, Hon. J. J.
Drayson, G. B.
Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)
Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)


Baldwin, A. E.
Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.
Hulbert, Wing Cdr. N. J.


Banks, Col. C.
Duthie, W. S.
Hurd, A. R.


Barber, Anthony
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.
Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)


Barlow, Sir John
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)
Hutchison, James (Scotstoun)


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Erroll, F. J.
Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.


Beach, Maj. Hicks
Finlay, Graeme
Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Fisher, Nigel
Iremonger, T. L.


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)


Bennett, F. M. (Reading, N.)
Fletcher, Sir Walter (Bury)
Jennings, Sir Roland


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Fletcher-Cooke, C.
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)


Bennett, William (Woodside)
Ford, Mrs. Patricia
Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Fort, R.
Jones, A. (Hall Green)


Birch, Nigel
Foster, John
Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.


Bishop, F. P.
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)
Kaberry, D.


Black, C. W.
Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Lonsdale)
Keeling, Sir Edward


Boothby, Sir R. J. G.
Fife, Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell
Kerby, Capt. H. B.


Bossom, Sir A. C.
Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)
Kerr, H. W.


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)
Lambton, Viscount


Boyle, Sir Edward
Gammans, L. D.
Lancaster, Col. C. G.


Braine, B. R.
Garner Evans, E. H.
Langford-Holt, J. A


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
George, Rt. Hon. Maj. G. Lloyd
Leather, E. H. C.


Braithwaite, Sir Gurney
Glover, D.
Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Godber, J. B.
Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)


Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)
Gomme-Duncan, Col. A
Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.


Brooman-White, R. C.
Gough, C. F. H.
Lindsay, Martin


Browne, Jack (Govan)
Gower, H. R.
Linstead, Sir H. N.


Bullard, D. G.
Graham, Sir Fergus
Llewellyn, D. T.


Bullus, Wing Commander E. E
Grimond, J.
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (King's Norton)


Burden, F. F. A.
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)


Butcher, Sir Herbert
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)
Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)


Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.


Campbell, Sir David
Harden, J. R. E.
Longdon, Gilbert


Carr, Robert
Hare, Hon. J. H.
Low, A. R. W.


Cary, Sir Robert
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)
Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)


Channon, H.
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)


Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)
Harvey, Air Cdre, A. V. (Macclesfield)
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.


Cole, Norman
Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)
McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.


Colegate, W. A.
Harvie-Watt, Sir George
Macdonald, Sir Peter


Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Hay, John
Mackeson, Brig. Sir Henry


Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert
Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.
McKibbin, A. J.


Cooper-Key, E. M.
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)


Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Heath, Edward
Maclay, Rt. Hon. John


Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. F. C.
Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Maclean, Fitzroy


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
Higgs, J. M. C.
Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)


Crouch, R. F.
Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)


Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)


Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)


Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
Hirst, Geoffrey
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)


Davidson, Viscountess
Holland-Martin, C. J.
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir Reginald







Markham, Major Sir Frank
Raikes, Sir Victor
Summers, G. S.


Marlowe, A. A. H.
Ramsden, J. E.
Sutcliffe, Sir Harold


Marples, A. E.
Rayner, Brig. R.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)
Redmayne, M.
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Maude, Angus
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Teeling, W.


Maudling, R.
Remnant, Hon. P.
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Renton, D. L. M.
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Medlicott, Brig. F.
Ridsdale, J. E.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Mellor, Sir John
Roberts, Peter (Heeley)
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Molson, A. H. E.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter
Robson-Brown, W.
Tilney, John


Moore, Sir Thomas
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Touche, Sir Gordon


Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Roper, Sir Harold
Turner, H. F. L.


Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Turton, R. H.


Nabarro, G. D. N.
Russell, R. S.
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Neave, Airey
Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.
Vane, W. M. F.


Nicholls, Harmar
Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Nield, Basil (Chester)
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas
Vosper, D. F.


Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.
Wade, D. W.


Nugent, G. R. H.
Scott, R. Donald
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Nutting, Anthony
Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)


Oakshott, H. D.
Shepherd, William
Walker-Smith, D. C.


Odey, G. W.
Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)
Wall, Major Patrick


O'Neill, Hon Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. O.
Smithers, Sir Waldron (Orpington)
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Osborne, C.
Snadden, W. McN.
Watkinson, H. A.


Page, R. G.
Spearman, A. C. M.
Webbe, Sir H. (London &amp; Westminster)


Peake, Rt. Hon. O.
Speir, R. M.
Wellwood, W.


Peto, Brig. C. H. M.
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)


Peyton, J. W. W.
Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Stevens, Geoffrey
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Pitman, I. J.
Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)
Wills, G.


Pitt, Miss E. M.
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Powell, J. Enoch
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.
Wood, Hon. R.


Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Storey, S.



Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Profumo, J. D.
Studholme, H. G.
Mr. Buchan-Hepburn and




Sir Cedric Drewe.

OVERSEAS INFORMATION SERVICES

7.10 p.m.

Mr. Ernest Davies: I beg to move,
That this House regrets that Her Majesty's Government has failed to formulate and provide adequate finance for a long-term and co-ordinated plan for the Overseas Information Services.
I move this Motion in no party spirit because in previous debates in this House on overseas information services there has been unanimity on the need for such services to be adequate to project the British point of view overseas. As "The Times" has stated, the projection of Britain overseas is a national affair to which both parties are committed.
I regret that it has been necessary for the Opposition to put forward this Motion. We have considered it necessary to do so owing to the dilatory manner in which the Government have handled the question of overseas information services since the cuts were made at the beginning of 1952. From then the position has been frozen and, despite the recommendations of the Drogheda Committee, which was appointed to make an impartial inquiry into the

level of the services, no action has yet been taken.
It therefore appears to us that the Government have failed to appreciate the importance of mainaining an adequate level of these services, the contribution which they can make and the greater contribution they would make, if increased, to the creation of better understanding of British policies and institutions and the democratic way of life. They have failed to appreciate the valuable contributions which these services make in binding the Commonwealth and Colonies closer to this country, the help they give to the maintenance of British prestige and leadership, and, finally, the valuable weapon they are in the conduct of the cold war.
It appears to us that expenditure on such peaceful weapons as overseas propaganda, overseas broadcasting, and overseas information services can be more constructive in ultimately relieving tension and bringing about closer understanding between peoples than the expenditure on weapons of destruction which has been necessitated by the international situation and involves us in a very heavy defence programme. If the situation is


looked at in that way I think it will be agreed that the meagre expenditure on these services is out of all proportion to the very heavy expenditure on defence. Whereas, today, we spend £1,600 million a year on destructive weapons and other aspects of defence, only £10 million is being spent on the creation of better understanding.
The delay we have experienced on the part of the Government in reaching any decision as to what should be the level of the overseas information services has a deplorable history. At the end of 1951 and the beginning of 1952 severe cuts took place in the services amounting to £500,000 per annum. The Foreign Office Information Service, the Commonwealth Relations and Colonial services were all cut and the British Council was compelled to close down many centres abroad, while the B.B.C. in particular suffered a severe diminution in its services, especially Europe and Latin America.
These cuts came on top of previous cuts which had been necessary to run the services down following the high level they had reached during the war, but, coming on top of those cuts, they did irreparable harm to the overseas services of this country. The Drogheda Committee now recommends that most of these cuts should be restored.
In this House on 2nd April, 1952, I initiated a debate on the Civil Estimates. Following that debate there was appointed an inter-Departmental Committee with the British Council and the B.B.C. represented on it which recommended, so one understands, that the level of the services should be increased, but agreement with the Treasury was not possible. Following that, this independent Committee was appointed on 30th July, 1952, with Lord Drogheda as its Chairman. That Committee did a most valuable, comprehensive job which I am sure is appreciated on both sides of the House. They sat for 12 months and reported to the Foreign Office in July, 1953. Although a year has passed since it reported to the Foreign Office, no decision has been reached by the Government as to what action they are to take on the recommendations in the Report.
It was not until nine months after the Report was presented that a summary was published as a White Paper, in April. 1954. All the House has had in

regard to the views of the Government on the recommendations has been an interim statement by the Joint Under-Secretary on 1st March this year. He then said that still further examination was necessary before any decision could be reached. But he announced at that time that increases would take place in the information services of the Foreign Office, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office amounting to £330,000.
The British Council, which has suffered so much in the successive cuts, had some services cut even further as a result of that decision. Even though that statement was made at the time, the Estimates which have been published for the current year—as shown by the White Paper, Command 9192—showed that the increase amounts to only £250,000. That means that the total amount being spent today on overseas information services is £10,230,000, an increase of only £250,000 over the previous year.
Surely that small increase is not adequate to meet the rise in costs which must have taken place. Surely this country can afford to spend more than £10¼ million on these services today. We are frequently told by the Chancellor that the country is now far better off than when the present Government took over. If we are better off, why cannot the cuts which were made be restored; why cannot the recommendations of the Drogheda Committee be carried out? Have the Government not got some of their priorities wrong?
Ironically enough, on the very day after the Joint Under-Secretary made his statement in the House, further delaying the implementation of the Report, the Assistant Postmaster-General came to the House and announced that certain payments were to be made over to the Independent Television Authority to enable commercial television to start. The Government were able to find £750,000 a year, plus a loan of £2 million, to enable commercial television to start a second programme on commercial lines which was not wanted so far as we are aware, but were not able to find additional money for overseas information services.
It seems that somewhere the priorities of the Government have gone wrong.


Queer standards are applied when the country can afford to put on an alternative television programme, but cannot afford to provide adequate information services overseas.
Where does the national interest come in? Where does the interest of security come when it is considered more important to hand over public money to private interests to enable them to start a second television programme than to provide money for adequate overseas information services? I say that they are not adequate at the present time; that the national interest demands that they be increased because, or partly because, of the great increase which has taken place in the broadcast services of the U.S.S.R. and her satellites.
Yesterday, in reply to a Question, the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs gave figures of the increase which has taken place. In 1947, the B.B.C. was broadcasting 622 programme hours weekly and the U.S.S.R. and her satellites 424. Then the B.B.C. was doing half as much again in broadcasting overseas as was the U.S.S.R. At present, the B.B.C. broadcasts have fallen to 567 programme hours weekly, whereas the figure for the U.S.S.R. and her satellites has risen to 1,307.
This increase has brought the U.S.S.R. figure up to nearly 2½ times as much as the B.B.C., compared with seven years ago, when the B.B.C. broadcasts were one-half more than the Soviet Union. With that tremendous increase in broadcasting by the Communist States, surely it is necessary that there should be adequate counter-propaganda.
In the light of these figures, and earlier figures, the Drogheda Committee recommended an increase in broadcasts by the B.B.C. and in the activities of the British Council and an increase in activity as regarding the other information services. In brief, the findings of the Committee were that the value of the information services was accepted and that there was a need for them to be increased, but although there was this need, there had been a steady diminution.
The Committee pointed out that great harm had been done by the successive cuts; that the services were inadequate and should be increased; that the best value could be obtained from the services

only if they were conducted on a basis of long-term planning, that is to say, if there was a constant programme with an assured maintenance of a good level of activities and if the provision of sufficient finance to maintain this was guaranteed.
The Report also recommended that there should be greater co-ordination between the different services, and that a senior Minister should be responsible for them. Recommendations made by the Committee included a greater expenditure and a number of small additions to existing services of the Foreign Office and other prescribing Departments; a substantial increase in the work of the British Council and an increase in the services of the B.B.C., amounting, in all, to a total of about £1,845,000 per annum, which would be achieved within three to five years. This increase would bring the total amount expended on these services to only £12 million, or £12½ million, if rising costs are taken into account.
It is not difficult for the Government to decide whether or not we can afford this additional £2 million. The figure of £2 million represents a very small increase indeed compared with the country's total Budget. In fact, if the increase were granted by the Government, and £12 million were spent on information today, it would represent only one-third of 1 per cent. of the total Budget expenditure.
Surely we can afford to spend that amount on information services designed to achieve better understanding of the British way of life, our policies and our institutions. We spend £1,600 million a year to deter aggression by creating a fear of the power of this country in combination with our allies. To preserve the peace, we are justified in spending £12 million. Is it not better to appeal to the higher qualities of men rather than to their fears?
One recommendation of the Drogheda Report attracted a major share of comment and criticism in the Press, in this House and outside. It was the suggestion that the European services, the services to Western Europe, should be eliminated, except to Western Germany. I have a suspicion that when the Committee found that it was making recommendations for increased expenditure amounting to some £2 million, it was thought necessary to


appease the Treasury and that some compensating economies should be found. It is coincidental that the countries not visited by members of the Committee are those which suffer. So far as I understand, though members of the Committee made wide tours of investigation overseas, there was no on the spot investigation of our information services in Europe.
In the summary of the Report the reasons why the services to Western Europe should be eliminated are not given in full. Nor are the reasons against their elimination given at all. The summary states that the "pros and cons" were included in the Report, but they are only meagrely disclosed. The two reasons given for the elimination of these services are that the B.B.C. is no longer the political force that it was during the war and that the money might be better spent on
catering for the need of the influential few rather than for that of a mass audience.
These reasons are based upon a misconception. Of course, the political influence of the B.B.C. cannot be similar to what it was during the war. Then there were unique circumstances. The B.B.C. was the one free voice heard in Europe for a number of years. But Britain is still regarded as a leading Power. Britain is still turned to for leadership. It is estimated that in Western Europe there are about 5 million regular listeners to the B.B.C. and probably 1 million to 2 million listen every night to the B.B.C. in the Western European countries outside Western Germany.
I do not think that anyone will dispute that the B.B.C. presents the voice and the views of the free world, and is still regarded as speaking with the most authoritative and objective voice in Europe. London calling Europe disseminates the most honest news, and is turned to by millions who want the truth presented without bias; and who wish to learn what Britain is thinking, what she advises and what she is doing. British prestige, leadership and influence in Europe would suffer irreparable harm were this voice to be dimmed or to go unheard.
Outside North America Western Europe has, per population, probably more radio sets than any other part of the

world. Here is an area where the masses may be reached through the medium of broadcasting, for broadcasting is a mass medium. With France and Italy one quarter Communist and politically unstable; with the U.S.S.R. flooding the Scandinavia ether with attacks on Western policies and on N.A.T.O., and appealing to them to follow a policy of neutralism, it is essential that this counter-propaganda should continue. It is necessary for us to continue to encourage our allies and to convince them that for the preservation of the free world they must remain our allies and that they have made the correct choice.
Hitler, Goebbels and the Communists all appealed to the mass and not to the influential few—as the Report suggests that the B.B.C. should do in Western Europe—and they appealed successfully. I regret that yesterday the Joint Under-Secretary was unable to give any assurance when I asked him to give it that these services would not be eliminated. I ask the Minister to be sure to give us that assurance today. The services must not be brought to an end. The cost of maintaining them is small. If they were eliminated, there would be a saving of a mere £135,000. That would be the saving if the services were taken away from an audience of regular listeners—not daily, but over a period—of 5 million people.
If there are 5 million regular listeners and the cost is only £135,000, that means that each listener is being obtained at a cost of only 6d. per head per annum. Is there any other way in which such excellent propaganda, such valuable information, can be conveyed at so cheap a cost as 6d. per head per annum? To save that amount and to take away from 5 million people the voice of the B.B.C. to which they want to listen, is, as "The Times" says today, a completely wrongheaded idea. We often think that the Government are wrong-headed, but surely they will not be wrong-headed to this extent. Surely they do not want to destroy the good will that has been created, to harm the prestige of this country, and to lose this audience and perhaps the frequencies which are used by the B.B.C. for the European services.
I remind the Minister that it is not easy to regain an audience built up over a long period. Once lost it is lost for ever, as happened in Latin America—an


instance with which my hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) intends to deal. When frequencies are given up they are snapped up immediately by other would-be broadcasters, especially the U.S.S.R. and, on occasion, the "Voice of America." I therefore ask the Joint Under-Secretary to give an assurance that these services will be continued.
Several of my hon. Friends hope to deal with the position of the British Council. I do not propose to say much about it except that it has suffered probably more than any of the information services. In that respect, the proposed cut is the most wasteful of all. A lot of spadework is necessary and a lot of capital investment is required to build up the valuable services which the British Council provides. If those services are suddenly cut off the money which has been put into creating them and obtaining the audience—the consumers, as it were; the teachers, the institutions, and so on—is lost overnight.
Fortunately, the would-be debunkers of the British Council, the Beaverbrook Press, have themselves been thoroughly debunked during recent weeks by the excellent 'booklet published by its Staff Association. I was glad to see that in tile Drogheda Report well deserved commendation is given to the work of the British Council. All the same, contrary to the recommendation of the Drogheda Committee, the British Council work is to be further cut. The work in Ceylon is to cease although the Committee recommended an increase in the work in Asia. Similarly, in Australia and New Zealand there is to be withdrawal.
We should like to hear something about the circumstances in which a decision was taken that the British Council should withdraw from these three countries. Our information is that when the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations visited those countries he gave instructions, without consultation with the British Council, that its work was to cease. There was no consultation with the Executive Committee of the Council. Instructions were given in an arbitrary manner that this work was to cease. To say the least, this was extremely discourteous behaviour on the part of the Secretary of State.
I should like the Minister to tell us what is to happen to the work which was being done by the British Council in these countries. Is the recommendation of the Committee about Australia and New Zealand to be carried out? Are there to be cultural attachés to the High Commissioners' offices? We should like to know whether work is to continue and, if so, how it is to be carried on. Also, we should like to know why it cannot be carried on under the auspices of the British Council, as it was in the past.
There is a lot of work which the Council is doing in this country which could be increased to great advantage. One of the most valuable activities of the Council is in the care it takes of overseas students. For lack of adequate funds the work of the centres and hostels is severely handicapped. A large number of students who would use the Hanover Street centre are unable to do so because, in view of its financial position, it can cater only for a restricted number.
Above all, the British Council requires that there shall be long-term planning. It takes time for its plans to reach fruition. Money is wasted when it is forced to close down its activities. One of the great difficulties which faces the Council, if it does not have an assurance that its activities will not be interfered with and that sudden cuts will not be imposed, is in the recruitment of staff. It is very difficult to recruit staff if one does not know whether the work is to go on, or even whether the Council is to continue in existence.
The Drogheda Committee recommended that there should be a five-year programme both for the Council and for the B.B.C. Just as is the case with university grants and with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, so it should be with the British Council. It should be certain that it will receive adequate finance to enable it to carry out a long-term development programme.
The final recommendation of the Committee is on the co-ordination of the information services. Under the Socialist Government a senior Minister was responsible for all these services. In the first instance, it was the Lord President of the Council, my right hon. Friend the


Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), and, later, it was the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, my right hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Gordon Walker). At the same time, there was a committee of Parliamentary Secretaries acting under the chairmanship of the, as it were, co-ordinator to discuss the long-term programmes and general matters concerning the overseas information services. I understand that no such committee functions today and that there is no co-ordinating Minister responsible to the House.
As I understand, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is responsible for the Central Office of Information, which is the servicing Department, and that the respective Ministers of the prescribed Departments are responsible for their own activities, but there is no Minister who brings together the various activities of those Departments and ensures that there is a long-term programme and that it is properly framed and assured of continuity. Perhaps the Joint Under-Secretary can tell us tonight what the arrangements are, if any, for the co-ordination of the information services, for without some such arrangement as we have had under previous Governments I do not see how the recommendations of the Report about long-term planning and development can be effective.
I urge the Government tonight to tell us what their attitude is towards the Drogheda Committee Report. I suggest that it is necessary for the Government to take six steps to increase the overseas services and to make them adequate, effective and efficient. First, the Government must accept in principle the recommendations of the Report with the exception of the elimination of the European services. Secondly, they must give an assurance that the Western European broadcasting services will be continued and maintained. Thirdly, the Government must give an assurance that the work of the British Council in Asia, the Commonwealth, the Colonies and this country will be extended as recommended or will be carried on by other means, either as recommended in the Report or otherwise.
Fourthly, the Government must accept the principle of long-term planning as essential to the efficient and effective co-

ordination of our information services and must authorise a five-year plan to enable this to be carried out. Fifthly, the Government must assure adequate finance to maintain the agreed level of activities; that is to say, an assurance must be given to the British Council and to the B.B.C. in particular that once the long-term programmes are agreed upon there will be no sudden cuts in the activities of those bodies and no sudden imposition of restriction upon their finance. Sixthly, a senior Minister should be made responsible for the co-ordination of information services.
These are the minimum essential requirements to ensure that the voice of Britain is clearly and consistently heard as far and as wide as the interests of democracy require. They are necessary to enable this country to maintain its position of influence not only in the Commonwealth, but also in the councils of the world and to continue to play the rôle in world affairs to which its power and prestige entitle it. Only thus can we materially and effectively contribute through our information services to the preservation of the freedoms of the democratic world and to the struggle to maintain peace.
I trust that the Government will tonight give the assurances that we demand. Otherwise, when the debate comes to a close I shall have to ask my hon. Friends to divide the House.

Sir Robert Boothby: On a point of order. As one who is not seeking to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, might I respectfully point out that the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies), who has just spoken very interestingly, has taken three-quarters of an hour to address the House? If everybody else is to speak at comparable length there will be time for only three speeches in the House before the Minister winds up the debate. Can anything be done to stop the torrential flow from the Front Benches?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): That is not a point of order.

7.45 p.m.

Sir Leslie Plummer: I beg to second the Motion.
I hope that the intervention by the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir R. Boothby) will not come out of my allotted


time, and that I shall be able to make my short speech without having such a burden imposed upon me.
The Motion has been ably and comprehensively moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies), and I shall try to follow his example by approaching the problem, as far as I possibly can, in a non-party spirit. Before I settle down into that groove, as it were, I am tempted to quote some words from the "Economist" of 8th May. Doubtless the Joint Under-Secretary has read them. Indeed, I do not doubt that they are burnt into his memory for they are rather bitter.
Talking about the Drogheda Report the "Economist" said:
Paralysis of the will and confusion in the mind seem to seize Ministers when they are asked to make decisions about the British information services abroad. They have taken nine months to publish as a White Paper a summary of the report that the Drogheda Committee took 10 months to produce.
Those are harsh words from a publication which is normally friendly to the Government. I mention the words because they indicate that even if we do not approach the matter in a vindictive spirit, other sources of public expression do.
With two of my hon. Friends and three hon. Gentlemen opposite I sat under the able and distinguished chairmanship of the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) on the Select Committee on Estimates considering overseas broadcasting. A Report was published about two years ago—Report No. 287—which, if the Government had read it and had understood its explicit and implicit findings, would have resulted in our information services being much better than they are today, particularly the external service of the B.B.C., and would indeed have lightened the load of the Drogheda Committee, for in many ways the Select Committee's Report and the Drogheda Committee's Report agree.
The Report of the Select Committee was an exhaustive analysis of the whole of the organisation of this important service. One of its findings—here the Drogheda Report is in complete agreement—is that the external service of the B.B.C. needs to be financed on the basis of a quinquennial grant, similar to that

in the case of the University Grants Committee.
The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. J. Rodgers) on 2nd April, 1952, made a strong plea for the external service to be financed over a long term. Clearly, that is a good thing to do. It does not mean that the emphasis on certain programmes cannot be changed as circumstances demand, but it means that the people who are responsible for the external service can do what the Drogheda Report said they ought to do and that is to do the work that has to be done continuously and on an adequate scale.
The Government did nothing at all about that. They listened to the Treasury opposition to putting on a proper financial basis the whole of the external service. That has had an absolutely cataclysmic effect particularly on the morale of the staff of the B.B.C.'s external service who do not know, to use a phrase from the "Economist," when the axe hanging over them in the faltering hand of the Government is going to fall upon them.
One of the explicit recommendations of the Select Committee Report and of the Drogheda Report is that something ought to be done about the transcription service which was cut to ribbons by the Government. That distinguished soldier and administrator, Major-General Sir Ian Jacob, who was Director-General of External Broadcasting at the time when we were investigating the service, made it clear that one of the most important jobs that we can do in overseas propaganda concerns the use of the transcription service; that is, by recording programmes and supplying them to overseas broadcasting stations.
Almost all those programmes go to countries which are accustomed to sponsored radio. One would, therefore, assume that a network taking a transcription service from this country would expect to be paid for playing the records, but, in fact, we discovered that the reverse was true. Many of them paid the B.B.C. for the right to use these records, with the result that the British atmosphere, which we want to create and to be appreciated, was being put out over the air from stations which normally do not provide that kind of service.
The Government have cut this external service of the B.B.C. by a quarter. It


was producing 600 transcription services a year, but now the figure is cut to 450, practically all at the expense of Latin America: reports, music and all the rest, by which we were explaining the British way of life. In the view of Major-General Sir Ian Jacob, the transcription services offered one of the most effective methods of presenting our case. The Government have now cut those services.
In 1952–53, the last year for which I nave figures, the B.B.C. asked for £5½ million for its external services, which was £750,000 more than it had had in the previous year, for reasons which it could not control. For instance, £200,000 was in respect of increased salaries, and the Government must accept some responsibility when an organisation has to increase its salaries owing to the increase in the cost of living. Then, £150,000 was wanted for new developments in the Far East, the Middle East and India, and to organise the full use of the high-powered transmitter in Singapore. Another £95,000 was wanted for Latin America.
In addition, hon. Members should not forget that there are certain services which the Government want the B.B.C. to undertake and develop, but which it is not proper for me to discuss at this moment. At any rate, altogether the B.B.C. had a perfect right to ask for this increase of £750,000, but the Government said, "No; you can go back to £4¾ million, and your services will have to be cut." What suffered? Latin America, for all intents and purposes, is an almost complete blank as far as our services are concerned.
There was one thing of which the Government did take notice and that was jamming. We were all interested and pleased when the Government made it clear that the cost of overcoming jamming was not to come out of the money for the programmes, but a quite sinister note was struck, during the period when the Committee was investigating this matter, by a Treasury official who talked as if it was perfectly proper that the increased cost of overcoming jamming, because the Russians had speeded up jamming, should be found out of economies in overheads.
I hope the Joint Under-Secretary will make it clear that the Government do not accept that argument. We have already had examples of the way in which the

Government proposes and the Civil Service disposes, and I hope that, on this occasion, the Government will not listen to this argument from the Treasury, but will make it quite clear that the cost of overcoming jamming is a defence cost and should not be taken out of the money provided for programmes.
I come back to Latin America, because this is an illustration of the serious effect on our services of the Government's parsimonious attitude. In 1947, we were broadcasting to Latin America, in Portugese, 3¾ hours per day; in 1951, it was cut to 3½ hours, and that half-hour was cut by the Labour Government. Today, it is 1¼ hours. In Spanish, in 1947, we broadcast to Latin America 6½ hours a day, in 1951, 5¾ hours, whereas today the programme time is approximately 1½ hours. That is all we broadcast to Latin America today.
What has happened since we made these cuts in this matter? The air abhors a vacuum. The United States and Russia stepped in and occupied the vacant air. Immediately we came off the air, these two countries went in, and here again I must quote Sir Ian Jacob, who, in paragraph 1191 of the Drogheda Report, says this:
America and Britain are much more rivals on the air in South America than they are in Europe.
He went further than this, and this is a reminder of what happens when we go off the air, particularly in South America, because he went on to say, speaking of tit, Russians:
They have been expanding their South American broadcasts, as, in fact, they have all their others. Even though they might not fill the exact time or something of that kind, the sort of thing we find is this. Take the direct listener. If he turns on where he normally is accustomed to getting the B.B.C. and he finds the B.B.C. has gone, well, then, what is likely to happen is he turns on a little bit and he finds Moscow, and then he says Hello! What is this?' and he listens and then perhops he goes on listening; you never know.
This is good advice from a man who, demonstrably, knows his business, but the Government did not listen to this advice at all.
What they did was to decide to cut the Latin American service and to send a noble Lord from another place as a member of the Government on a goodwill tour of Latin America to speak to a few hundred people at the luncheons and dinners


which had been organised for him, while hundreds of thousands of people who had been listening to the voice of Britain on the air were cut off from that pleasure. With all respect, I submit that the noble Lord is no substitute for a well-organised information service.
Then, the Government sent their own mission, headed by Brigadier Crosland, to Latin America to argue the case for British trade and for the British way of life, but what has happened in the meantime is this. Germany is capturing Latin American markets, and the British United Press last week issued a précis of a United Nations Report on Latin America which says this:
In the first nine months of last year, Western Germany took Britain's place as the leading European exporter to that area. Japan also increased her exports to Latin America. During the same nine months, Latin American purchases from England fell by 15 per cent.
For a saving of about £100,000, we have denied ourselves the opportunity of using the radio as a protection for our trade—and it is a two-way trade with Latin America.
I hope that the Government will agree with the Drogheda Committee's recommendation that the Latin American service should be reinstituted; but let us make no mistake about it. We cannot reinstitute and run it at the same cost as we did it before. It will cost more than that. Other countries have gone ahead of us, devising programmes which are popular in the Latin American countries, and the Government will learn the cost of trying to get back on the air when once they have come out.
The Drogheda Report also suggests that, if the Latin American service starts again, the Foreign Office should act as agents for the B.B.C. I beg the Joint Under-Secretary to have nothing to do with that quite fantastic suggestion. If anybody should represent the B.B.C. it is the Board of Trade, not the Foreign Office. Whoever represents the B.B.C. in Latin America should be trained in broadcasting, and the training given to people in the Foreign Office is quite different from that given to people at the B.B.C.
One of the things that came out of the Select Committee's Report was that the Board of Trade is now represented as a prescribing member of the committee that

looks after external broadcasts. I wish that the Board of Trade was represented by a stronger Minister and that he would do something towards ending the Foreign Office domination of these broadcasts. The representatives of the Foreign Office and of the Service Departments who sit on this Committee are, of course, primarily interested in defence, and they think of the schemes of broadcasting as instruments of defence. I want them also to be considered in the interest of trade. It is vital that we should consider them in that form, because that is the form in which the United States and Western Germany are considering their approach to Latin America.
What would the businessmen on the benches opposite think of a businessman who said, "I am going to give up my sales force in Lancashire, because I do not think that I can sell any more goods there. I shall cut my advertising. I shall not advertise in the newspapers and the periodicals, and I shall take my posters off the hoardings. I shall also sack my travellers." They would say, "In a few months' time that man will recognise his insanity and will go back to advertising." But hon. Members opposite who are in business will know that, when he does, he will have to take more space in the newspapers and periodicals, will have to have larger posters on the hoardings and will have to employ more travellers, because, in the meantime, his competitors will have got ahead of him.
That is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves in Latin America. Our competitors have got ahead of us because we use tactics for which a branch manager of a chain store would be fired for using. But, even at this late hour, the Government have the opportunity of putting someone in charge of our overseas information services who understands the business and who recognises that this nation bas to advertise its wares, its policy, its forces and its moral strength, and to do it with dignity and decency, and without the sort of cheese-paring which is now making a mockery of the whole service.

8.3 p.m.

Mr. John Rodgers: It is extremely unfortunate that the party opposite should have couched its Motion in the terms in which it appears on the Order Paper, because the projection of


the British viewpoint before the world is, as the Drogheda Committee quite rightly reported, of immense importance on diplomatic, strategic and economic grounds. I think that the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) is doing a great disservice to a cause which he protests he holds dear, namely, the projection of the voice of Britain, by bringing it into the cockpit of party politics.
This a subject which could have been left out of party politics, and I think that the phrasing of the Motion is particularly unfortunate. Furthermore, it ill becomes hon. Gentlemen opposite to couch a Motion in such terms, because the present Administration have done far better than did the Labour Party when in office. Then each year we had successive cuts made under no agreed plan and for no reason beyond the necessity to make economies in order to compensate for such wild-cat extravagances as the groundnut scheme and the like. Those extravagances had to be compensated for, and there were annual cuts in the allowances made for broadcasts and other information services.
After all, some credit might have been given to the present Administration for the fact that they set up the Drogheda Committee. No attempt was made by the Labour Party when in power to set up an independent committee to investigate how the service should be run and financed. I think we all regret the introduction of this party political spirit by the hon. Gentleman opposite.
Incidentally, I would say to the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer) that I was extremely grateful for his defence of the advertising fraternity, and for his recognition of the excellent work which they do abroad. It was different from the attitude which he developed during many of the debates we had on television. I am glad that at last he is a convert to the cause of advertising.
I think that all of us feel gratitude for the way in which the Drogheda Committee so painstakingly went about the preparation of its Report. It is a great pity that we have not been able to see the full Report. While I appreciate that there are possibly very good reasons why parts of it should not be published, it is a pity that we have had only a very truncated form of the Report. As the

hon. Member for Enfield, East said, it is sometimes very difficult to appreciate the reasons behind some of the decisions when we do not know the arguments pro and con.
I find myself in complete and absolute agreement with the major findings of the Report, although I must admit that I am disappointed at the low level of the suggested increase in expenditure on overseas information services. I am also critical of some of the specific recommendations contained in the Report, on one or two of which I should like to comment later. Although our former economic supremacy has passed to the United States, we are still the leaders of the Commonwealth, and, as such, we retain a moral leadership throughout the world. A great many people all over the globe look to us and believe that we in this island enshrine the ideals of the free world.
I must confess that I do not think that we are noticeably winning the cold war. Indeed, I feel that the appeal of Communism is extremely strong, and that the countries menaced by the Communists are looking to us for a lead. Just because the free world lacks a common ideology it has not the same dynamic appeal as Communism. This is, I think, the more reason why we should devote the maximum amount of money for the projection of the voice of Britain and of the free democracies. The voice of America, good as it is, is not always, alas, the voice of the free world, and I believe it imperative that the voice of Britain should be heard independently, forcibly, clearly and consistently.
I understand that the United States spend some £65 million a year on information work overseas. We, with a third of their population, should at that rate spend some £22 million a year. As the hon. Gentleman opposite pointed out, we do not. We spend a mere £10½ million, with the possibility of spending £12½ million if the recommendations of the Drogheda Committee Report are accepted. No figures are available for the amount of money expended by the U.S.S.R., but such information as we have would indicate that it is far in excess of the amount expended by the United States.
The Drogheda Committee have recommended a mere £1,185,000 a year increase


in expenditure. Even in the truncated version of the Report, it is obvious to anyone who knows anything about information work overseas that our resources are spread terribly thinly throughout the world, and that in practically no country are we doing an adequate job. We are holding on tenuously due to the efforts of one or two officials doing magnificent work, but we are not spending money lavishly on propaganda anywhere in the world.
Instead of recommending such a small increase, I should have hoped that the Drogheda Committee would have recommended something more consistent with the ratio of our population to that of the United States. After all, as has been pointed out, we spend £1,600 million a year on defence, and £12½ million on our overseas information service represents less than 1 per cent. of that total.
How much more effective it would be to use our information services to try to change the views of potential aggressors before coming to the final arbitrament of war. I do not think that any money spent on propaganda is misspent. I should very much like to urge my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to consider granting the modest increase suggested by Lord Drogheda and his Committee, and even to consider spending more. Since 1947, as I understand it, the work of the Overseas Information Service in all its branches has been approximately halved. That is a very serious position indeed, and when we consider that in this country alone commercial advertisers are spending on various media the sum of £200 million a year, then to appeal to the Government for £12½ million, or even £20 million, is a mere bagatelle.
It is not just because there is a Tory Administration that I make this speech. I should have made the same speech if the Labour Party had been in power. So let us face it, that the reason why we have to make these appeals is that the Government, of whatever party they may be, do not appreciate the immense importance of propaganda in our diplomatic, strategic and commercial life. We tend as a race to dislike self-advertisement. We think, quite wrongly, that if a Minister makes a statement of policy papers all over the world and the broadcasting systems of the world will report

it faithfully, and that the people will read it and remember it, and that, therefore, the publicity has been done. Those of us who have spent many years in commercial as well as Government propaganda work know that is quite untrue. One has to keep on, day in, day out, with the basic message, repeating it not in one medium only but in all the media—the radio, the Press—

Mr. Christopher Mayhew: And the chimpanzees.

Mr. Rodgers: I thought this was a serious debate, but apparently the hon. Member does not feel it to be so. It has to be done for many reasons, in support of our foreign policy, to preserve and strengthen our ties with the Empire and Commonwealth, to increase our trade, as the hon. Member for Deptford rightly said, and to protect our investments overseas.
The Treasury—and here I agree again with the hon. Member for Deptford—always views propaganda activities with suspicion, and so I would urge my hon. Friend and all the Ministers not to be mean, not to be parsimonious, not to be shortsighted in their approach to the problem of overseas information. I am not saying that economies cannot be made. I am not saying that everything done by the C.O.I., the British Council and the B.B.C. is right and proper, or that there could not be some essential economies made in their work, but I would urge that more money should be spent on propaganda and information work even than Lord Drogheda's Committee suggested.
I agree in the main with the Committee's findings that Government activity should, in the main, be supplementary to private effort and existing channels should be made use of and that there should be inquiry as to whether or not over a period of time we reap political or economic advantage from the work done, but I hope that my hon. Friend will not overlook the point stressed by the Drogheda Committee that it would be better not to undertake information work at all than to skimp it. A message badly delivered is worse than no message at all.
I know there is today an inter-Departmental Committee under a Foreign Office chairman, but there is very little evidence of co-ordinated policy in the various


regions and between the various agencies. I agree with the Drogheda Committee that we should not recreate in time of peace the Ministry of Information, but some greater co-ordination is required. Since several Ministers are involved, each with his own Departmental responsibility, I believe that that co-ordination can come only at Cabinet level, and, therefore, I hope that the Government are seriously considering the establishment of a Cabinet Committee to deal with overseas information. I agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, East that it should be presided over by a senior Minister, preferably one with no Departmental responsibilities, such as the Lord Privy Seal or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In saying this, I intend no discourtesy to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a man for whom I have abundant admiration and abundant respect.

Sir L. Plummer: So has he.

Mr. Rodgers: Helping to hold, as he does, the purse strings, he is not the right person to co-ordinate this work.
I should like to hear whether the Government intend to set up the independent advisory committee that has been recommended, and if the Government will consider allowing each Department to arrive at a figure of cost for its own work within the total fund available rather than have to work, as has been the case up to date, to a ceiling imposed on it. The funds should be granted as university grants are, on a five-year basis, at least. This sort of work cannot be planned on a short term basis. One needs at least five years to carry through a plan, and I hope the Government will have the courage to fix a figure for at least five years ahead as a minimum, not as a maximum.
There should also be a reserve fund in addition to the funds allocated, so that advantage can be taken of any event that happens in the world of which advantage can be taken. To do so may require some extra work and extra money. Advantage cannot be taken of a sudden event if one has to go through the tortuous process of extracting a little more money from the Treasury, because by the time it has been obtained, the opportunity has long since

passed and one is unable to take advantage of the situation for which the money was required. Any commercial propaganda unit usually has available funds for unforeseen emergencies.
I agree with the Drogheda Committee that it is unsound in principle that agencies should finance capital expenditure out of current revenue, and I hope the Government intend to see that that does not occur in the future. Would my hon. Friend also let me know what is the position about the Board of Trade Committee on Overseas Information? Has it been set up? What are its terms of reference? Who constitute it? Will it be co-ordinated with the Drogheda's Committee's recommendations?
I think I have said enough to make people realise that I believe that the Government have been penny wise and pound foolish in this matter. Therefore, it will not surprise hon. Members to know that I read with alarm the suggestion that the French, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish services should be stopped merely to save £135,000. The risks one takes to do so make one boggle. All those countries are menaced by Communist pressure.
May not this suggestion be misinterpreted? May it not seem that we are seeking closer relations with Germany because we think the French are getting weaker and the Germans are getting stronger? It could be so misinterpreted. If we discontinue our services to Portugal may not General Franco think that we are adopting an aggressive attitude towards Spain while being particularly friendly with Portugal? And so on. The misunderstanding that could follow a complete cessation of these services is quite frightening to contemplate.
There is plenty of evidence that those services have attracted substantial audiences, and it is important that we should not lose audiences that have been attracted. If need be, let us reduce the services a little, but let us hold the staff together, let us retain the people who have become experts in broadcasting to those various countries, because it is impossible to build up propaganda services over night, as we who were responsible for propaganda at the Ministry of Information in its early days discovered. It


took us about one and a half to two years to build up our propaganda services in the Ministry of Information. The mistakes we made in that first year and a half are frightening to remember. Let us make all the economies we can and need to, but let my hon. Friend give us an assurance that the Government will not accept the Drogheda Committee's recommendation to cut out those broadcasts altogether to Western Europe.
Russia and the United States of America are spending vast sums on this activity of overseas information. They do it because they believe in it. They do it because they believe that strategically, diplomatically and commercially they are reaping benefits from it. Yet I venture to suggest that on grounds of security and trade, no country more than ours needs to maintain an efficient and continuous information service linking up our Empire and Commonwealth, sustaining our friends and explaining our position to our enemies.

8.19 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: As I listened to the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Seven-oaks (Mr. J. Rodgers), which were much inferior to his concluding remarks, I could not help recalling the circumstances in which the Drogheda Committee was first set up. It was set up at a time when there was a propaganda campaign in the Press, supported by many advertising interests, directed against Governmental publicity. It was set up at a time when the Government were seeking by empty and paltry gestures, such as that of reducing the number of Ministerial cars, to try to show that they were going to fulfil their election pledge of slashing expenditure.
It was undoubtedly the hope, when the Drogheda Committee was set up, that the outcome of the Committee's findings would be a recommendation for a further reduction in the expenditure on the information services. But that did not happen. Although since the Korean war—at quite the wrong time—there has been a progressive reduction in information expenditure, the Drogheda Committee has proposed that there should be a substantial increase today in expenditure for the information services. Most hon. Members will agree that at the

moment that is the right course to take, but, while accepting the three principles set out in the first part of the Drogheda Committee Report, I would dissent—and this will be the burden of my remarks this evening—to a considerable extent when the Committee suggests that the pattern of the information services should be changed in such a way as to cut down our services to the West where we already have friends.
I must declare a personal interest. Like the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. MottRadclyffe), I have been a vice-chairman of the British Council for a number of years. In addition, I have broadcast frequently on the European services during the last 14 years. Nonetheless, I trust that anything which I say tonight will be considered to spring from a desire to be objective rather than partisan, and if I dwell on those two aspects of the Report it is primarily because my personal experience is chiefly concerned with the British Council and with the overseas broadcasting services.
I think everyone will be glad that the Drogheda Committee has triumphantly vindicated the work which the British Council has been doing so successfully for so many years. Despite the scurrilous vendetta which is carried on against it in certain sections of the Press, and despite the fact that at one extreme we have Moscow, which described the British Council as a British organisation for espionage, and at the other extreme we have a certain section of the Press which charges the Council with folk dancing, it is a fact that between those two extremes it is recognised that the British Council has been doing a valuable job in interpreting the British way of life to the Continent, to Asia and to all those other countries where its voice is heard.
In passing, may I be allowed to pay a word of tribute to the former director-general and chairman of the British Council, Sir Ronald Adam, for the magnificent work which he did in the years after the war in reviving and strengthening the British Council and in making it the valuable instrument of public opinion and public communication which it has become since that time.
It is agreed by all those who have seen the splendid men and women of the British Council carrying on their work in the field, whether abroad or at home,


that they are doing a valuable and constructive job, and that view is endorsed by the Report of the Drogheda Committee; but it is precisely because there is that general agreement that I feel bound tonight to draw attention to the extremely discourteous way in which the Government have acted on certain of the recommendations of the Drogheda Committee in connection with the British Council.
It will be recalled that the Drogheda Committee recommended that there should be a substantial increase in the staff of the British Council in Ceylon and in certain other countries in Asia. Despite that recommendation, and entirely without reference to the executive committee of the British Council, the Minister for Commonwealth Relations quite arbitrarily announced that there would be a withdrawal of the work of the Council in Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon. That was an act of the greatest discourtesy, and I feel obliged tonight to make my protest about it.
To add insult to injury, it was stated at the time that, because the British Council is a subsidised body which depends for its income on the various Governmental Departments for funds, and upon grants from the Treasury, it had no right to demand that its voice Should be heard in this matter. The British Council may be a kept body but it has its pride; and that is why I feel obliged tonight to say that the manner in which this matter was handled by the Government was certainly not one in which a body like the British Council, which has deserved so well of the country, should be treated.
May I turn to the way in which the servants of the British Council live in a constant state of insecurity owing to the manner in which the grants to the Council are made. The Drogheda Committee Report insists that what is required for work such as that done by the British Council is a sense of security of tenure, a feeling of continuity and the belief that if some project is entered on in any given year, those concerned in it will be able to look forward to continuing their work in conection with it in the future.
Instead of that, during the time in which I have had any connection with the British Council I have seen how valuable projects have been undertaken and then have suddenly been interrupted in

the middle of their development by some wholly arbitrary decision by the Treasury. The men of the Treasury are not politicians; they are not statesmen; they are mathematicians and, to some extent, financial jugglers. When they make a cut they are concerned with it merely as a bookkeeping entry. It has no relevance to the purpose of organs of information such as the British Council, the C.O.I. or, indeed, the B.B.C.
The point I want to make is that this arbitrary method of action by the Treasury is not only detrimental to the work of information but, in a sense, is apt to turn out to be more costly than if it were possible, as is proposed in the Report, to have some kind of quinquennial grant which would allow planning to be made in advance. I would give as an illustration the fact that very often—I have certainly seen it happen in the case of the British Council's activities—owing to a Treasury cut it has been necessary for an unexpired lease suddenly to be terminated, for people who have been engaged locally to have their contracts broken, for the officials of the Council to require certain compensation; and the total result, when all the compensation was added up—the compensation which had to be given as a result of the Treasury's intervention—was that it was much more costly than if the work had been allowed to continue uninterrupted.
May I turn to certain contradictions which exist in the Drogheda Report? I notice that on the one hand the Report recommends that there should be an increase in the number of information officers in France, while at the same time it recommends that the work of the British Council should be reduced and that broadcasts to France should be abolished. That seems to me to be a contradiction which is completely untenable.
I recall the exceptional work which these officers were doing in the provinces of France shortly after the war, and I know that their work was decisively brought to an end with scarcely any notice being given at all. I regret that, and I welcome the fact that it has been proposed that there should be an increase in the number of information officers who have contact with local editors, school teachers, and various anglophile bodies


and who, in fact, did a splendid piece of work before their function was abolished.
I want to urge tonight that, instead of doing away with the British Council in order to strengthen the information officers, on the contrary, the British Council should be maintained in the form in which it has done such valuable work during the last few years. I am personally not at all attracted by the proposals in the Drogheda Report, which unfortunately seem to have found favour with the Government, of translating the officers of the British Council into cultural attachés.
I believe that the cultural attaché as a diplomatic agent has a certain job to perform. He is useful at embassy parties, but he is generally regarded as being a rather specialised character, and I cannot help feeling that he would in no sense serve as an adequate substitute for the corporate form of the British Council, certainly as constituted in France, with all its wide contacts and independence of outlook, with the solidarity always attributed to it, and with the stability which the British Council has had over the last nine years in France.

Mr. Peter Smithers: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to give the false impression that cultural attachés are people who only go to parties. Can he think of any better agent than the French cultural attaché in this country?

Mr. Edelman: I was limiting my description of the work of the cultural attaché. He is a very valuable person, but he is in no sense a substitute for a well-organised office, such as the office of the British Council in France and elsewhere. Connected with that is the substantial point proposed by the Drogheda Committee that broadcasts to France should cease. There are, indeed, proposals to stop broadcasts to a whole series of countries.
I want, for the few moments that remain to me, to confine myself to this question of the cutting down of broadcasts to France. It is a great illusion to imagine that every Frenchman loves Britain. That, indeed, is not the case. There are many Frenchmen who today

turn towards Moscow rather than towards London for their inspiration. There are also many Frenchmen who live in the past and who regard Britain and France as traditional enemies.
I mention that because I believe it is absolutely necessary that we should maintain our radio communications with France. It is possible even today to go to France and see large numbers of well-educated Frenchmen who believe that we are perpetually celebrating the Coronation, and there are those who believe that we live in a perpetual atmosphere of spleen and fog. I believe that, particularly when we have pressure from the East, it is more than ever necessary to maintain our French radio service on the B.B.C.
I want to emphasise, in conclusion, that the Drogheda Report recognises that there should be continuity and security for those who are engaged in the information services, and I want to propose two things. I believe that the information services should be assimilated into a collective body and known as the Information Service. I am not proposing that the individual bodies as they exist should be amalgamated. On the contrary, I believe that they should preserve their entities, but there should be a comprehensive information service, rather like the Foreign Service, in which information officers can be mobile and move about from one activity to another, according to the strategic needs determined by the Government of the day.
I believe that the official committee as it exists now is wholly inadequate for determining the strategy of our information services. I believe that the official committee should yield to a new committee directly under a Minister of Cabinet rank, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks; I thought that that was a most valuable suggestion. I believe that, if that were done, we could hope that there would be a harmony within the various organs of information which today does not exist, and that that harmony could be assimilated to the economic and political strategy of the country as a whole.
The Government have had several years to make up their minds about the shape of their information policy. The fact that they have not done so is the basis of our charge against them today. I hope that


the Joint Under-Secretary, on behalf of the Government, will be able to assure us that many of our anxieties, if not unfounded, will be allayed. I hope most emphatically that he will accept the proposals which we have made that the section of the Report which proposes the elimination of our services to Western Europe should certainly not be put into effect.

8.36 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Anthony Nutting): It might be for the convenience of the House if I were to intervene at this stage to comment on and to reply to the speeches that have been made. Then, if time permits, at the end of the debate perhaps I can reply briefly to the hon. Member who winds up for the party opposite.
The Government cannot, of course, accept the Motion moved by the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies), nor do I think he would expect us to do so. None the less, I welcome the opportunity which this debate has given to the Government to receive and to consider, as we shall do, the views and comments of the House of Commons upon the Drogheda Report, and which it has given to me to provide hon. Members with facts and figures to show what we are doing and what we have done since we took office to maintain and improve our information services.
In a leading article this morning, "The Times" said that the charge levelled in the Opposition Motion against the Government
could have been made against the Labour Government when they were in office.
I propose to show that not only could and does this charge lie against the former Labour Government, but that there is no real case for making it against Her Majesty's present Administration. First, I ask myself, what sort of coordinated and long-term policy, to use the words of the Opposition Motion, did the party opposite produce for the information services during the six years that they held office after the war? The short answer is, "None whatsoever."
In support of that contention, I quote the words of the Drogheda Report when it said:

Since the war the overseas information services have lived in the worst of all possible worlds"—
six years of Labour Government.
Reluctantly accepted as being necessary in the post-war era they have, nevertheless, been steadily whittled down. So far as we can judge this has not been done in accordance with any plan which took into account the needs of the country for propaganda abroad, but by a series of annual cuts in which the total amount available for all overseas information work was reduced by a more or less arbitrary figure.
That is the charge which the Drogheda Committee have made against the party opposite.
I should not wish to quote that charge without quoting the figures to substantiate it. During the last four years of the Labour Government the overseas information budget was steadily diminished by arbitrary cuts without any plan which took into account the need for propaganda abroad. In 1948–49, the amount was £11·74 million; in 1949–50, £11 million; in 1950–51, £10·82 million; and in 1951–52—their last year in office—£10·28 million. I need hardly add that during this whole period costs steadily rose both in this country and overseas, so that the effective reduction in activity in terms of work was far greater than the figures actually show.

Mr. Edward Shackleton: Would the hon. Gentleman continue the rather interesting figures into the period of the present Government?

Mr. Nutting: Yes, of course, I was proposing to do that and the comparison will be very interesting to hon. Gentlemen opposite.
I remember the debate on this topic in April, 1952, when the Opposition said that, while it was perfectly right and justifiable for them to cut large whacks off the budget of the information services during their term of office, it was unforgivable, unjustifiable, nonsense and false economy for us to make one further cut, which we did immediately after we took office in 1951. The hon. Member for Enfield, East repeated this theme in his speech this evening.
With the best and most bipartisan will in the world, I cannot believe, particularly in view of what the Drogheda Committee has said, that the Labour Government, when their term of office ended, had got


the information services down precisely to the right figure and that any cut beyond that would be a national disaster.

Mr. Ernest Davies: But does not the hon. Gentleman recall that in the last year of office of the Labour Government, when we proposed to cut the service to a certain extent, there were protests in the House and we realised that we had cut them to the bone and, in fact, we increased the total amount to be spent as a result?

Mr. Nutting: The figures do not bear out the hon. Gentleman's contentions, nor does the Drogheda Report, because the figures for the last two years are these: in 1950–51, £10·82 million; in 1951–52, £10·28 million. According to my arithmetic, that is a reduction of £500,000 in the last year of the Labour Government.

Mr. Davies: Does the hon. Gentleman not remember that we made a smaller cut than was originally proposed because we realised we had gone to the absolute limit and that it was necessary to restore certain cuts?

Mr. Nutting: I do not know what went on in the Administration of which the hon. Gentleman was a member, and I congratulate him if he was able to save the information services from still further cuts. What I am telling him is that he was cutting the information services throughout his term of office while he was doing my job at the Foreign Office, and in the last year of the Labour Government he cut off half a million pounds. He cannot run away from that however much he does not like it.

Mr. M. Follick: What was the figure in 1944?

Mr. Nutting: Let me carry the story a little further. It is true that when we took office in 1951 we cut the information services by a further £500,000.

Mr. Davies: By £700,000.

Mr. Nutting: It was our overseas information services.

Mr. Davies: By £700,000.

Mr. Nutting: By £500,000. The hon. Gentleman must get his arithmetic right. Let me add, incidentally, for the information of the hon. Member who is a great

supporter of the B.B.C. that none of this cut was applied to the B.B.C., whose budget remained at the figure the Labour Government had fixed.

Mr. Davies: But the service was cut?

Mr. Nutting: The service had to be cut because there was a rise in costs. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] There were rises in costs throughout the period of the Labour Government, and does anybody deny that costs were not increasing throughout the period of office of the Labour Government? Of course they were. I am making no complaint about this; I am simply stating the facts.
There was an effective reduction in the services of the B.B.C. when we came into office because costs were continuing to rise, but the actual figure of the B.B.C. grant remained very nearly the same as when the Labour Government had left office. However, I invite the House not to forget that we took office at the very end of October and that, as the Opposition knows very well, is the time of year when the Estimates are being prepared. We did not choose the date of the 1951 Election, nor could we be held responsible for the appalling financial crisis which this Government had to tackle immediately they got into office—and I strongly suspect that the existence of that financial crisis had a great deal to do with the determination of the date of the Election.
That crisis was not of our making, but the measures we had to take to meet and surmount it had to be taken as a matter of the utmost urgency. Some painful economies had to be made and the information services had to make their contribution. What did those cuts we had to make amount to? To judge from the speech of the hon. Gentleman, there were desperate and drastic cuts all round. This is what they amounted to: a reduction, but not an abolition, of the B.B.C. Latin American service, a further reduction upon what the Labour Party had done when in office, some reduction in the B.B.C. European services, closing the information service in Portugal, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and cutting out film distribution in Latin America and Europe. Finally, there was a cut of £241,000 or 9 per cent. in the British Council total grants, of which the Foreign Office grant-in-aid was £180,000.
As against that, what have we done to extend during that same period. We opened the Khartoum information office in 1953 and reopened the Persian information office. [Laughter.] The hon. Gentleman laughs, does he not consider it important to have an information office in Persia? We have also opened an information office in Bahrein, and strengthened the offices in Beirut, Singapore, Indo-China, Burma, Japan and Siam.

Mr. Follick: What is the good of it in Bahrein?

Mr. Nutting: If the hon. Gentleman takes that point of view I invite him to take a trip to Bahrein—

Mr. Follick: I have been there.

Mr. Nutting: —and to consult the British Political Resident on the subject. He will get a little information and education.
Unlike our predecessors, we did not content ourselves with making arbitrary cuts in the information services, leaving them to get on as best they could, with no settled policy or plan, no hope of continuity, living from hand to mouth, from cut to cut, and from year to year. We decided, not the Labour Opposition, not the Labour Government, in the words of the Motion now before the House and so eloquently moved by the hon. Gentleman, that a long-term and co-ordinated plan was necessary for the overseas information services if they were to give of their best and to do the right job in the right place.
It was for this reason that I said in our debate in July, 1952, that it was high time that an inquiry was held into the political aspects and necessities of information work overseas, so that we could at least know what needed to be done and where, and whether it was being done adequately or not. Following upon my statement, and within six months of the Government taking office, we set up an official committee to investigate these questions. The committee presented its report in July, 1952, and, in the light of that report, it was decided to follow up this preliminary inquiry by the appointment of an independent committee, from people outside the Government service, to investigate the matter further and to give Ministers their views.
Meanwhile, pending the result of this independent inquiry, it was agreed that the present level of activity of the information services should be maintained; in other words that they should be insulated against rising costs, as indeed they were, without having to cut down activities and work, as they had to do constantly throughout all the previous years, including—I admit it frankly—the first year of our Administration because of the cuts we were forced to make, so that they could carry on their work without the need to cut down where rising costs made it impossible to keep within the settled budget.
Thus, for the first time since the war, the overseas information services were given a breathing space by being protected against rising costs and exempted from annual cuts while a comprehensive study of their needs was being undertaken by an impartial committee. Since the costs continued to rise during the time the committee was sitting the information budget was increased from about £9¾ million for 1952–53 to just under £10 million for 1953–54.
The Drogheda Committee concluded its deliberations in July of last year and presented its Report. At this stage, I should like to join with other hon. Members in paying a very warm tribute and in offering the very real gratitude of the Government to Lord Drogheda and his Committee for the very excellent job and exhaustive study they made of this vast, complicated problem. Members of the Drogheda Committee and their chairman gave an enormous amount of their very busy lives to travelling far and wide to collect first-hand impressions of the work, needs, interests, and difficulties of the service in the Commonwealth and the Colonial Empire and in a number of foreign countries.
It is very unfair of the hon. Member for Enfield, East to say that the Drogheda Committee did not visit European countries. The Committee visited Germany and Yugoslavia and Lord Drogheda visited Rome on his way to the Far East.

Mr. Ernest Davies: He did not visit Scandinavia.

Mr. George Darling: Or Holland.

Mr. Nutting: It is impossible to cover everywhere.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn: How was the Foreign Office able to recommend a State visit by the King and Queen of Sweden recently when they found it possible to sanction a cut in the information service to Scandinavia?

Mr. Nutting: I think that that is the most irrelevant intervention that I have heard for a long time.
The Drogheda Committee produced a valuable Report and did a very essential job. The far-reaching nature of its recommendations is in itself a measure of the need for such an exhaustive inquiry which, after six years, the party opposite failed to carry out.
I come now to the gravamen of the charge that we have delayed unduly our consideration of the Drogheda Report. It is true that we had the Report 11 months ago and have not yet been able to formulate our policy on its long-term implementation, but what is not true is that we have done nothing about it. On 1st March I announced to the House that in our present financial situation Her Majesty's Government did not feel able to accept commitments on the scale suggested without further examination.
Meanwhile, the Government had reached a decision with regard to the level of activity for 1954–55 and had decided to make available an additional £330,000 to be devoted principally to strengthening information services in South-East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe and to some reinforcement of information services to the Commonwealth and the establishment of three regional information offices in the Colonial Empire.
The House may care to have further particulars of these proposed expansions. In the Middle East we shall be opening an information office in the Persian Gulf and strengthening the information office in Beirut. In South-East Asia we shall be strengthening the information offices in Singapore, Indo-China, Burma, Japan and Siam. In Latin America we shall strengthen information offices in Sao Paulo, Lima, Caracas and Bogota. We shall be opening an information office in Sweden. The total cost of this programme will be approximately £70,000.
The Colonial Office is opening three information offices in the West Indies, the Gold Coast and Nigeria at an additional cost of approximately £35,000. On the Commonwealth Relations front there will be some expansion of information work in Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon at an approximate additional cost of £10,000. The total of these expansions is about £115,000. The rest of the £330,000 to which I referred in March will be devoted to increased costs arising from the British Council and the B.B.C.

Mr. H. A. Marquand: I was not clear whether the hon. Gentleman was saying that the increase in Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon was a net increase, or merely an increase in the information services, the British Council services in those countries having been scrapped.

Mr. Nutting: I am glad the right hon. Member raised that point so that I can make it quite clear. The saving by the withdrawal of the British Council from Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon will release about £15,000 to £16,000. Part of that is being devoted to increasing and strengthening the information offices of the Commonwealth Relations Office in those three Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Follick: The hon. Gentleman has just said that we have an information office in Bahrein and will open another in the Persian Gulf. That will mean we shall have two in the Persian Gulf.

Mr. Nutting: No, the hon. Member is confused. Perhaps I am partly responsible for confusing him, and, if so, I apologise.
We are to open an information office—I cannot tell the hon. Member whether it has actually opened yet or not, but the proposition is that part of the £70,000 extra to be spent by the Foreign Office information service will be on the opening of an information office at Bahrein. In addition, savings accruing from the withdrawal of certain of the British Council services in Europe will be devoted to improving certain basic services of the Council where its activities warrant the highest priority.
In terms of the results which these expansions will achieve I believe they will compensate for many of the reductions we were forced to make when we


came into office. They are, perforce, modest since a large proportion of the total increase, I regret to say, will be taken up in meeting the increased costs of the B.B.C. and the British Council. At the very least, however, this expansion programme shows that under this Government the information services have not been subjected to a continuous, yearly, downhill, depressing progression of cuts without consideration of the political requirements which these services serve. Hon. Members opposite should realise how much better our record is than theirs in that we have taken the trouble first to find out the facts and, having found out the facts, to make immediate provision to meet the most urgent first requirements. Meanwhile, as regards the long term, Her Majesty's Government have not yet reached a final conclusion.
I do not think that this is unreasonable, nor should it be a matter for criticism. It is all very well to say that an expansion programme of £2 million a year with about £½ million for capital expenditure is a drop in the ocean and can be undertaken without careful thought. If we took that view of every proposal the taxpayer would have to meet an astronomical Budget. The Drogheda Committee specifically excluded any question of finance and what the country can afford from their considerations and terms of reference. That was not for that Committee to decide and determine. The whole purpose of its inquiry was to look at the other side of the medal to see what was needed to be done. The duty of the Government is wider than that. The duty of the Government and, I humbly suggest, the duty of the House of Commons is to balance the necessities and desirabilities against what the nation and the taxpayer can afford to pay.
The hon. Member for Enfield, East said that the Chancellor had told us how much better off the country is. The reason is that there is so much more adequate and closer control of the country's expenditure. Any long-term plan for the overseas information services must accord with the long-term financial prospects of the nation. Otherwise, one cannot hope to be able to carry it into operation. I submit in answer to the hon. Member that the worst possible service we could render to ourselves and the aims of our propaganda services

abroad would be to say now that we accept the recommendation of the Drogheda Committee. I was asked to accept them in principle. What is the use of accepting them in principle if we cannot carry them out and if we find, in two or three years, that we cannot afford to put them into operation? That would be the worst possible service to ourselves and the information services.
Surely the hon. Gentleman, who held my office in the Foreign Office and dealt with this subject, has learned the lesson which certainly a very short time at the Foreign Office has convinced me of—the lesson of the post-war years—that continuity, particularly in the financial field, is essential for a good and efficient information service. Therefore, the Drogheda recommendations must be considered not only upon their own merits, but also against the background of the constant need to make and maintain economies in Government expenditure.
I now turn to one or two of the detailed points raised by hon. Members. First, the hon. Member for Enfield, East raised the question of the B.B.C. broadcasts as compared with those of the Soviet Union and her satellites. It is quite true that broadcasts of the Soviet Union and her satellites have increased, as the hon. Member himself quoted from the answer given to him by my hon. Friend yesterday. I would say, in answer to him, that the really big cut in the programme hours of the B.B.C. took place between 1950 and 1951, when he was responsible, and not me. I was very pleased to find out that we have reinstated the programme hours, and that I am now three programme hours ahead of the hon. Gentleman, compared with the last year of his Administration.
Further, since 1953, the general level of activity of the B.B.C. external services has been maintained by Her Majesty's Government, including provision for rising costs and provision for anti-jamming. I can assure the hon. Member for Deptford (Sir L. Plummer), who is not in his place, that that provision will, of course, have to continue.
The total volume of external broadcasting by the free world—I hope this is


some comfort to the hon. Gentleman—still greatly exceeds that of the Soviet Union and her satellites.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does that include America?

Mr. Nutting: It includes all the major N.A.T.O. countries and Yugoslavia. For the information of the hon. Member, I would say that the major N.A.T.O. countries include the United States of America.
It will, therefore, be some comfort to the hon. Member for Enfield, East, that I can tell him that the total broadcasting time of the major N.A.T.O. countries plus Yugoslavia is substantially more than 2,000 programme hours weekly. [An HON. MEMBER: "We have heard that."] A little repetition comes very well from time to time. That figure is nearly twice that of the programme hours of Russia and her satellites.
The hon. Gentleman further criticised the proposal in the Drogheda Report that the B.B.C. should be withdrawn from Western Europe, and he asked me to give a categorical assurance that we would not carry out that proposal. I have said that the whole problem of our information services, and in particular the Drogheda Report—this goes for the economies as well as the expansions—are now being examined in the light of our other commitments and resources. I cannot, therefore, give any assurance to the House on points of detail, whether it be on economies or expansion, until this review is completed as a whole.
The hon. Member for Deptford was very critical of our treatment of the Latin American services. First, it is not quite true to say that we cut those services. There was an enforced cut during our term of office, but our cut was imposed by rising costs and not by any reduced appropriation for the B.B.C. through their grant-in-aid.
I wish to say a few words about the British Council, which the hon. Members for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) and Enfield, East mentioned. I entirely agree with them that if we want to get good people and good results continuity is nowhere more essential than in the sphere of the British Council.
This criticism that we have not provided for continuity comes ill from the

party opposite because the cuts imposed were, in 1948, £338,000; in 1949, £117,000; in 1950, £179,000; and, in 1951, £382,000; whereas, in 1952, we cut them by £241,000. We have now saved £56,000 on British Council services in Europe and all that money is being redeployed. Not a penny has been returned to the Treasury, the whole lot is being redeployed. Therefore, it does not come well from the Opposition to criticise us for our treatment of the British Council.
What is more, most of the principal cuts made by the former Labour Government from 1948 to 1949 and from 1950 to 1951 were made in precisely those areas or categories which the Drogheda Committee declared to be of the greatest importance—the Middle East and the supply services—and that is where we have redeployed the savings which we have made by reducing the British Council services in Europe.
I would add only this about the British Council. I would join with hon. Members in paying tribute particularly to the work it has done in the educational and training field. The Drogheda Committee—and I will go to this extent in commenting on its recommendations—said that the accent should be put on the under-delevoped territories. That is precisely what we have been doing with the British Council. All the three overseas Departments using the services of the British Council have been doing that for some considerable time. We agree that that is where the British Council could make its best effort.
I join with hon. Members in repudiating emphatically the very unfair and scurrilous Press campaign directed by a certain section of the newspapers against the British Council. I very much hope that the booklet which the British Council has turned out in its own defence will receive almost the same circulation as the newspapers to which they replied. I fear that it will not receive quite the same circulation, but I wish that I could think that it would.
Finally, a word on the question of coordination—[HON. MEMBERS: "W hat about Ceylon?"] I am sorry, the hon. Member raised the question of the withdrawals of the British Council from Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. The responsibility for deciding how the


British Council resources can best be used in the Commonwealth must rest with the Commonwealth Secretary, and on his return from his Commonwealth tour the Secretary of State informed the Chairman of the Executive of the British Council of the reasons for his decision to withdraw the Council from Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon.
He discussed with the Chairman the consequential arrangements involved. It is true that there was no consultation in advance, but a decision had to be taken, and after all, the Commonwealth Secretary is the responsible Minister. It is for him to make these decisions. He is responsible to Parliament for these decisions, and it is for him to make them and not the Chairman of the British Council.

Mr. Mayhew: Will the Minister—

Mr. Nutting: May I conclude my comments on this as I wish the House to realise what moved the Secretary of State to make this decision? It was felt by him that it would be more economical to devote the resources available to strenghthen the local information services in Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon rather than to continue separate British Council organisations in these countries.
I was asked what provision will be made for the future. The answer is that in Australia and New Zealand much has already been done and will still further be done by unofficial organisations such as the Empire Society, the Australian Theatre Trust and so on. The Commonwealth Relations Office and the local information services will always be available to help and to assist them. In Ceylon, discussions are proceeding with the Council with a view to maintaining their essential services in Ceylon, such as lecturers, scholarships, bursaries, and so on.

Mr. Mayhew: Although on points of procedure we recognise the responsibility of the Minister for Commonwealth Relations in regard to the British Council, is not the Minister aware that the British Council is an independent body with its own Charter and that policy decisions are in the hands of independent voluntary workers on the Executive Committee? What reason could there have been for the Minister to take this vastly important decision about the British

Council without consultation with the Executive Committee?

Mr. Nutting: I think the Minister was perfectly entitled to take this decision. He was engaged on a very long tour of the Commonwealth. He went into the question very thoroughly on the spot. The people on the spot must be held to know more about the relative needs for certain information services as between one branch or one agency of the service and another than somebody who is sitting in London.
It was as a result of exhaustive inquiries and discussions on the spot that my noble Friend Lord Swinton, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations took this decision.

Mr. Mayhew: Mr. Mayhewrose—

Mr. Nutting: I really must get on. Hon. Members on both sides want to take part in the debate and I want to allow them as much time as possible.
I was asked about co-ordination. I disagree flatly with all the suggestions which have been made by the opposite benches about co-ordination. I hope that the consideration by the Government of the Drogheda Committee's Report will be the last occasion on which the information services will be considered as a whole. Each Departmental information service is the arm of its own Minister. He is responsible for it and he must fight for it, as it fights for him.
I do not agree that it would be a good thing to have an information service, as rocemmended by the hon. Member for Coventry, North, for this very reason. The information service must exist for the use of the Departmental Minister in each overseas Department. We believe that that is a very much better way to allow it to function than to amalgamate it and to seek to co-ordinate it, as was done under the Labour Government, when I do not believe that it was done very effectively.
I assure the House that the Government pay the fullest regard to the need for adequate and effective information services to support our foreign, Commonwealth and Colonial policies We believe that these are essential today both as a weapon in the cold war and also as a means of maintaining this country's commercial position overseas. We accept that the services are an essential weapon and we


accept, too, that to beeffective information work must be done well, must be done adequately and in the right place and it must be done on the basis of continuity.
From what I have said about our record in the matter I think I have shown the House that we have taken practical measures to maintain, to improve and to expand the information services in certain essential directions. Judged against the record of the party opposite, we have nothing to be ashamed of. It does not lie in their mouths to criticise us because we are taking time, and rightly taking our time, to do the right thing, when, for six years, they failed to do the right thing themselves. For these reasons, I ask the House to reject the Motion.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Mayhew: I do not feel that the Minister's defence of the Government's action in relation to the withdrawal of the British Council in Ceylon was at all adequate or satisfactory. There are two points involved. One is the substantial question whether the British Council should be withdrawn from Ceylon. The second is the procedural question whether the Minister had any right to take this decision without consultation with the British Council itself.
On the first point of whether the Government are justified in withdrawing the British Council from Ceylon, the Minister stated that the people on the spot must judge; but, of course, the Drogheda Committee has reported on the British Council in Ceylon. That Committee's recommendation was, so far from withdrawing the British Council, that there should be a substantial increase of its activities and staff there. It is all very well for the Minister to say that the people on the spot should judge, but it was Lord Drogheda himself who went to Ceylon and who made a most careful examination and came to the conclusion that the work of the British Council was first-class and important and that it should be continued and expanded.
Lord Swinton goes out for a few days to Ceylon, and when he comes back he not only takes the decision, which is wrong in principle to withdraw the Council, but takes it, it appears, as a result of a whim, on the spur of the moment, without even consulting the executive

committee of the British Council. The protests about the action have been very widespread. The withdrawal from Ceylon raises wider implications, and I feel justified in saying a little more about it.
It raises the whole question of the status and independence of the British Council itself. The Drogheda Committee rightly places emphasis on the value for the purposes of its work of having the British Council independent of the Government, independent of politics and independent of governmental propaganda. Certainly in the case of Asia, where the Drogheda Committee recommends that the British Council's work should be expanded, I believe it is generally agreed on both sides of the House that the independence of the British Council should be preserved if it is to have its maximum effect.
With regard to the attitude of the Government—not only that of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations; this applies to the Treasury as well, but I will exonerate the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office—some Government Departments are tending to look upon the British Council far too much as a group of civil servants who take orders from Ministers and as a Government Department instead of an independent body with its own charter. As I said in my intervention to the Minister, the British Council is a group of purely independent, voluntary and, in many cases, distinguished citizens of this country. Two hon. Members opposite sit with me on its executive committee. We are not civil servants, and we do not want to be treated as civil servants. It is for the good of the British Council that it should be treated as an independent body, as Parliament intended that it should. The action of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations infringes upon that intention, and it is only one instance of several which could be quoted. I hope that in future the Government will mend their ways in this respect.
The second broad implication of the decision with regard to Ceylon is that it really will not do for the Government to insist one year that the British Council should go into a key country because vital British interests demand it, and a few years later demand its recall. Having been asked to go into a key country, the British Council spends money, time and


energy in establishing itself and its personnel there, as the Commonwealth Relations Office asks it to do. Then, a year or two later, the Government come along and demand its withdrawal, in this case without any reasons being given to the tender plant raised by the British Council. The Commonwealth Relations Office itself demanded that the British Council should go into Ceylon in 1950. Now, without even telling the British Council and without consulting the Ceylon Government, it decides that the British Council should be withdrawn. The net results so far as information affairs are concerned of the visit of Lord Swinton to Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon have been misunderstanding, ill will and waste of public money. I very strongly hope that that will be looked into.
One has to discriminate a little between various Government Departments on the information front. My experience suggests that some are a good deal better at this than others. I believe that in the Foreign Office, to some extent, the value of this work is appreciated, but I am thoroughly disappointed by the attitude of the Commonwealth Relations Office over the whole field of information policy. I note without surprise that the Drogheda Committee goes as far as it can towards censuring the Commonwealth Relations Office. On page 25 of its Report it says:
We attach the greatest importance to there being an efficient United Kingdom Information Service in the Commonwealth in order to help to strengthen all those links which now maintain the free association of the diverse nations of the Commonwealth. We are not satisfied that this problem has received enough attention; and we recommend that a new and vigorous impulse should be given to building up the Information Service of the Commonwealth Relations Office to proper strength ….
A little later on the Report says:
We believe that this Department requires some strengthening in staff and all the support that can be given to it at a high level in the Commonwealth Relations Office in order to link it closely with the higher direction of policy.
The Drogheda Committee goes as far as it could towards censuring the Commonwealth Relations Office, and I want to ask the Minister this. My information is that further censure of Lord Swinton is contained in the Drogheda Committee's Report, and I want to ask him if that is so, and, if it is, why it is not published in the White Paper.

Plainly, it would be most misleading to give the House only part of the Report of the Drogheda Committee in this respect. If the Commonwealth Relations Office is further censured, it will certainly tie up with my personal experience of information policy in that Department.
There is another instance that I should like to quote of the failure of the Government in a new field, though a very important one, of information activity, and that is the export of recorded television programmes, to which the Drogheda Report refers. In my view, it under-estimates the importance of this subject. Perhaps I ought to declare a small financial interest here, though, as I shall show a little later, I am one of those television performers whose programmes are not shown abroad, owing, I think, partly to the action of the Government.
I have made a study of the overseas information question and of the possibility of building up a great export market for British television programme recordings, which I think is a very serious possibility and a good proposition. Not only is the impact of these programmes considerable—and we all know that the impact of television is supposed to be greater than the impact of the printed word or even of sound radio—but the impact of a half-hour television programme in the Canadian or United States television systems, or even in Australia—a good B.B.C. television programme—is out of all proportion greater than that of halfan-hour of broadcasting or of an attractively produced propaganda leaflet. I hope the Government will take this seriously, because it is also profitable. Great profits can be made by the sale of recorded television programmes in the dollar markets in Latin America, the United States and in Canada today. We could not only put out the British way of life, but also make dollars while doing it, instead of spending money, as is the case with other programmes.

Mr. Smithers: Does the hon. Gentleman share my view that it is also very important to get the fullest measure of British participation in European television programmes, from the political point of view, because they might well otherwise be monopolised by Germany?

Mr. Mayhew: I could not agree more, and I hope that, in some of the football programmes, we shall have British teams playing occasionally. I do agree that exchange of programme on that basis is of great importance, but I am speaking of recorded television programmes, and I suppose the hon. Gentleman will agree that this is a great opportunity to which far too little attention has been paid in the Committee's Report.
I now want to ask what is the attitude of the Government to this matter. In May, 1952, the B.B.C. put up to the Government a scheme for the export of recorded television programmes at a time when the market for recorded television programmes was wide open to the first-comer. The B.B.C. put up a scheme by which, for a loan of £750,000 a year for three years, they would, in fact, go all out to capture the world market in television programmes. Unlike the Home Service of the B.B.C. the external services cannot borrow money, and they have to borrow from the Government as the only way out. I understand that this project was turned down flat and that no alternative was put forward by the Government. In the intervening period, it can be said without exaggeration that the world market for recorded television programmes has been captured by the United States, and I should therefore like to ask the Minister to state what is the attitude of the Government on this very important point.
As regards Canada, I happen to know that there is a tremendous demand for B.B.C. television programmes, in order to try to combat the cultural flood which comes up from the United States of America both on commercial radio and television services. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has been almost on its knees for B.B.C. material, but the Government has sabotaged the B.B.C.'s plan without suggesting anything as an alternative I should like the hon. Gentleman to consider that. My information is that Lord Swinton was chiefly responsible for turning down this proposition. My information is that the only reason he gives is that it is a job for private enterprise, and that when the commercial television people get going exports of television programmes can take place, but not until then. I should like the hon.

Gentleman to explain what is the reason for that.
However, my main purpose is to urge on the hon. Gentleman not to be content with the statement he has just made to us about the future of the British Council. What he said in effect—and he said it as though conceding something to the British Council—was that the cuts he is making will be fully compensated for because the same amount of money will go to expanding the British Council in its priority area. That is nothing like what we demand. It is nothing like what the Drogheda Committee recommends. The Drogheda Committee recommends that £600,000 more should be spent as a matter of urgency in expanding the British Council's work, particularly in India, Pakistan and Ceylon riot that it should be cut down in Europe and that the equivalent amount saved should be spent in those countries, but that an increase of £600,000 should be given to the British Council in the near future.
I have recently been in India, Pakistan, Burma and Ceylon and seen the British Council's work there, and I am absolutely convinced that if we are to maintain the British Commonwealth connection in Asia, especially in India, the work of the British Council is vital. It is so in keeping alive the English language in India and in keeping alive the English language in Ceylon. It may make all the difference between India's being an English-speaking country in 20 years' time or not whether we take seriously the rôle of the British Council in Asia. It is a matter of the utmost importance for Commonwealth relations and the future balance of power in the world.
I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider again this miserable suggestion of making cuts in the services to Europe and putting the money saved into the services to Asia. We must vastly expand our work in Asia as a matter of national interest, and as a priority matter. I hope for a much more generous and ambitious approach to the whole question of overseas information by the Government.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Shackleton.

Mr. Christopher Hollis: On a point of order. May I respectfully draw your attention to the fact, Mr. Speaker,


that during the debate only one Member on the Conservative back benches has been called?

Mr. Speaker: I realise that, but the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs did make a long speech.

Mr. Follick: He is going to make another one, too.

9.28 p.m.

Mr. Edward Shackleton: I regret, as the whole House does, that the time does not allow another hon. Member opposite to speak in the wake of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. J. Rodgers) who, apart from his first sentences, made a number of constructive proposals. The blame lies on the Joint Under-Secretary of State, who spoke for 40 minutes, though 30 minutes of his speech were devoted to attacking the Opposition. My hon. Friends who moved and seconded the Motion did so in moderate language.

Mr. Nutting: It is a Motion of censure on the Government.

Mr. Shackleton: The hon. Gentleman is being absurd if he thinks that every Motion regretting the Government has not done something is a Motion of censure, and I think it would be more convenient if he would give serious attention to the subjects we discuss. He has asked that he should be given leave to reply to the debate further. It is my intention to fulfil my undertaking to give him the five minutes for which he asked, but if he does not do better than he did in his last speech it is doubtful whether any useful purpose will be served.
My hon. Friends on this side and the hon. Member for Sevenoaks opposite have made some constructive remarks. Mostly, they related to the Drogheda Report. I think it would be well to consider how the Government's information services could be organised.
I should be the first to agree that I was not entirely satisfied with the performance of the last Government, but we want to look at the problem which confronts us as a nation, as, indeed, the hon. Member for Sevenoaks tried to do. We have the advantage of the Drogheda Committee Report to guide us. The most important aspect of the Report is that it lays down in unequivocal language, which I hope

will be convincing to everyone else, if not to the Beaverbrook Press, the importance of these overseas services, and I think the Government should give more serious consideration, both to the detailed proposals and to the wider and more general proposals. I want to refer to some of them and to make some criticisms of the Drogheda Committee Report.
The chief problem in examining the Report is that it is little more than a precis of the original report, and I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Sevenoaks in saying that it is extremely unsatisfactory that a great deal of it reads rather like a list of pious aspirations and truisms which I am quite sure do not do justice to the members of the Committee.
If there were time I should like to quote some of the more inane remarks which appear in the White Paper, but perhaps the silliest is the apparent conflict in the minds of the Drogheda Committee, if this White Paper satisfactorily represents the Committee's views, about the responsibilities of the information services. There is one remarkable sentence in the summary which says that it is much better done by private enterprise. Whether the phrase "private enterprise" is used in the political sense or whether it means merely private individuals is not clear. Obviously the presentation of Britain is in the hands of individuals who go abroad, whether they be Government servants, business men or tourists, but from the organised point of view the main effort must be through the Government organised services, and it is in that connection that we must look at these proposals.
Several of my hon. Friends have pointed to the extraordinary omissions from the Drogheda Committee's Report, not least of which has been the complete failure—and the Minister himself has been guilty of exactly the same thing—to refer to the Ninth Report of the Select Committee on Estimates. I wondered whether the Drogheda Committee had read it, and I wonder whether the Minister has read it, because when he was defending the Government's record, he said, "We at least set up a committee of inquiry." There was already an adequate Report from the Select Committee on Estimates and it is a pity


that he has not acted on some of its findings.
The House will, I am sure, agree that it would be a tragedy if we were substantially to cut down our European services. Not only is the European service fundamental in the conflict which, in the high words of the Joint Under-Secretary on a previous occasion, is taking place in the battle for men's souls or men's minds, but it is also a fact that most of our closest associations, affiliations and friendships lie with the European nations, and it would be deplorable if we were to follow the Drogheda Committee's suggestions and cut out entirely, or almost entirely, the B.B.C. services and, indeed, many of the British Council's services to these old friends and allies.
The Drogheda Committee Report contains a number of inconsistencies in these matters. On page 8 we read:
The 'Cold War,' 'essentially a struggle for men's minds,' and the British rôle in the Western Alliance required effort to promote our case behind the Iron Curtain, to fortify weak nations and to prevent misunderstanding and promote relations of confidence between ourselves and our Allies.
That, surely, must cover, if anybody, the Powers of N.A.T.O. and the Powers who are allied with us in Western Europe. Although the Government still refuse to make up their minds or to tell us, after all the months they have had to consider it, in view of the opinions expressed quite clearly from both sides of the House I cannot believe that they contemplate a wholesale destruction of the B.B.C. European services or the other cultural activities in Europe.
It is clear, despite the Under Secretary's defence of the Drogheda Committee and the charges that its members had not visited Europe, that they had made no very close investigation of the situation in these European countries, otherwise they could not possibly have come to these conclusions in the light of the evidence which is available, and which is available quite freely to hon. Members and the public at large if they want to have it.
One other point which I should like to make is that it is no use broadcasting to South America unless the South Americans have radio sets, and there are many more radio sets in Europe than in

South America. In spite of what is going on in Guatemala, I would regard the European scene as more important to this country than the South American one, but that is not to suggest that we should cut down broadcasts to South America.
There are one or two details to which I should like the Minister to give attention in the actual presentation of the B.B.C. broadcasts. It is a fact that today the B.B.C. are spending only about £35 per week programme cost—and the Minister will know what I mean by that—on our broadcasts to Russia, whereas we are spending about £500 per week programme cost on our programmes to France. That seems to me to be disproportionate. I think that some balancing up in the programme costs is necessary, and it would be desirable that the B.B.C. should take into account the feelings and the needs of the present time.
The Minister and some hon. Members referred to the tremendous Russian expansion in the field of propaganda. I should like to examine the Joint Under-Secretary's statement in more detail, but I am under the impression that at present the Iron Curtain countries are putting out far more radio propaganda than the Western nations.

Mr. Bernard Braine: Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman in his argument. In the case of Denmark, one of the countries to which the Drogheda Committee propose we should cease broadcasting, Russian and Cominform countries broadcast material has increased fourfold in the last two years.

Mr. Shackleton: I am much obliged to the hon. Member, and I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will take note of that, because he gave the impression that we were doing fairly well and holding our own quite comfortably in this direction.
I should like to ask the Joint Under-Secretary what the Government's attitude is to the specific recommendation of the Select Committee, to which certain of my hon. Friends referred, with regard to the development of the export of television programmes in the form of "canned" or recorded programmes. It is really too bad that this country has lost the advantage that the proposals made some years ago could have given it throughout the world, if, in fact, the Government do adopt these proposals.
It may be that the previous Government are also to some extent to blame, but that is not good enough. The present Government, in view of the Minister's passionate defence of their record, can now no longer hide behind the excuse that the Labour Government have not done it either. I would draw his attention to the particular passage in the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, on page 84, and he will see that there are proposals there which would also be self-financing, and that surely should appeal to the Government.
I should like to refer to certain other aspects of the Drogheda Report to which the Minister paid no attention at all. One of his more interesting remarks towards the end of his speech was that each information department should be responsible to the particular Departmental Minister, and he suggested that their job was to fight for them. Who fights for the Central Office of Information? I can hardly believe that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury fights very hard for them. This, if I may say so as strongly as I can, is clear proof that the Government have not really thought this problem out, because the Central Office of Information is a fundamental part of our overseas information services.
The Central Office of Information provides much of the material and it provides documentary films. It is part of what is called the ammunition dump for the people actually in the field. It is deplorable that the Minister never even referred to the important work that these people do. It may be that my choice of the words "ammunition dump" was not a happy one. Perhaps I should say that it is the source of important raw material for those operating the information services in the field.
Let me give the Under-Secretary an example of the consequence of the reduction in the Central Office of Information. Anybody accustomed to writing an article for transmission abroad for publication in overseas newspapers is today finding it much more difficult to get this work. Consequently, the overseas newspapers are not getting the continuity of presentation that existed previously. This is bound to have a detrimental effect on our information services.
Another aspect of the work of the information services, to which neither the

Minister nor the Drogheda Committee referred, is the work of the Travel Association. Some hon. Members opposite are, I know, extremely interested in the work of that association. It is a body which, financed to the tune of about £750,000 of Government money, is doing a first-rate job and is, furthermore, bringing to this country a great deal of commercial profit as well as propaganda profit. I am sorry that in his rather loose survey the Minister made no reference to the Travel Association.
My hon. Friends have dealt at some length with the subject of the British Council. We would still like to know from the Under-Secretary when he replies whether the noble Lord the Minister for Commonwealth Relations consulted the Governments of Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon before he arbitrarily closed the British Council offices there. It seems quite outrageous that a Minister, whatever his responsibilities, should take this type of arbitrary action without consulting either the British Council or the Governments concerned.
Since, I understand, as part of this vague pattern of information services, the noble Lord in question has some vague public relations responsibilities, and there has been some mention of them, I should like to know exactly what he is supposed to do in this field. I have tried to find out privately from certain Members of the Government. All that they could tell me was that they believed he had a public relations responsibility on the home front. I can only say that I hope he discharges it better than he does in the field of the Commonwealth.
The truth of the matter is that the men and women in the British Council are doing a first-rate job of work, and the one part of the Minister's speech to which I pay full credit was his reference to the deplorable attacks that have been made on the British Council. If he gets an honourable mention by "Back Bencher"—[An HON. MEMBER: "Cross Bencher.' "] I am sorry, "Cross Bencher"—I am quite sure he will be prepared to take it.
I should also like the Under-Secretary, in considering the future of the European Services, to bear specially in mind the needs of Austria. It would be a tragedy again if, following the recommendations of the Drogheda Report, the British


Council offices in Austria were wound up. There is a country which is under tremendous pressure and where it is extremely important that the type of cultural relationship which the British Council representatives have built up so extremely well should be maintained, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will contrive to see that the work is kept going.
The hon. Gentleman said very little about the work of the Foreign Office, which is his own Department, and I think it is worth referring to that part of the Drogheda Report which called the information service in New York a model of what an information service should be. But I think it is unfortunate that the Foreign Office have, in fact, got a false idea in judging what the pattern of information services in this country should be, because they have something of a vested interest by virtue of their own responsibilities in this field. I think a case has been made for some senior Minister with a general responsibility for co-ordinating this service apart from the Foreign Secretary.
What we wanted to know from the Minister was the attitude of the Government to the Drogheda Report. I think the House knows all too well and too painfully that it is one of indifference and refusal to face the real responsibility of putting the British case across to the world. Of course, we realise that the party opposite is bedevilled by some of their propaganda speeches made when in Opposition, but I think the Minister might have made a speech which bore a little less relationship to the type of speeches made in Opposition.
There is every reason why somebody should face up to the job of organising our information services, and I should like to draw attention to the actual wording of the Report, where it says:
One seeks in vain for any individual or Department in a position to lay down an overall policy for our propaganda overseas or able to decide in what manner the resources available for propaganda can be deployed to the best advantage.
The hon. Gentleman in reply, has said, in effect, "Leave it to the various Departmental Ministers."
I believe that a case for a co-ordinating Minister—after all, this Government was

very fond of co-ordinating Ministers in an earlier period of their career—has been made out. If there is one case where a co-ordinating Minister is necessary it is in this particular field, and I am sure hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House who are aware of this problem are inclined to agree with me. I therefore ask the Minister very seriously to consider the point of view put forward, which is not put forward in order to embarrass the Government.
I believe that the Government have, in fact, failed in their responsibilities, and if the Under-Secretary had shown some willingness in his earlier speech to face up to these responsibilities we might have hoped for something better in the future.
We are spending several hundreds of millions of pounds on defence, and, if necessary, we shall use several hundreds of millions of pounds in a hot war. Surely we can plan a rather higher proportion for putting across our views and our way of life to the rest of the world. One of the things which I think as a country we can lay claim to with the greatest degree of certainty is tolerance in our way of life. Our political way of life, when the 1922 Committee are not out of hand, is something of very special value to the rest of the world. Hon. Members on both sides of the House who have been abroad will recollect how often people in other countries have stated that one of the things that they admire most about Great Britain was the toleration which existed in our political life and in other fields as well.
I therefore hope that the Under-Secretary will think again and I ask him to speak to his right hon. Friend and look at the propositions that have been put forward. What we are seeking is an exchange of ideas in the world. We do not want to thrust ideas down the throats of other people, but we want the British view to have a fair chance of presentation. We want news to be presented impartially and we believe that, by and large, the type of work being done, if it were properly co-ordinated, would make a real contribution to furthering British aims and British policy in the world. It will not do so unless there is a greater willingness on the part of the Government to face their responsibilities.
I have always thought that at this time there were two really important things


we could do apart from building up our defences. One is to a policy of world mutual aid and the other is through a policy of information and the exchange of ideas on cultural relations. If this is to be done the Government must look at the position seriously.
If the Minister says that this time he cannot afford money, I would only point out that the figures suggested in the Drogheda Report amount to considerably less than it is proposed should be given to the new commercial television system. And, frankly, I think that all hon. Members would agree that this should come before the introduction of commercial television. So, if the hon. Gentleman is short of money, he can take it from there, though I admit he may be prejudiced because the Minister of State is such a passionate advocate of sponsorship.
What is needed today on the part of the Government is a spark of imagination, a belief that we have something to put across to the world, not only for our sakes but for the sake of the rest of the world. Certainly, there was no spark of genius in the speech of the Joint Under-Secretary of State. There was no appreciation that today there is need for a policy and for a belief in the mission he has; a belief of a kind that any self-respecting advertising man would have for his activities. I should like to see a little more of the missionary about the Minister's responsibility for the information services, and a little less of the determination to defend the record of his Government at all costs.

9.52 p.m.

Mr. Nutting: If I may, by leave of the House, I will reply briefly to the speeches made since I sat down. The hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) seemed disappointed in my spech and seemed to feel that I did not give sufficient information to the House. Also he kept on asking me to think again—if I may have his attention for a minute. The hon. Gentleman cannot have heard the speech I made, because I informed the House that the Government were considering the long-term implications of the Drogheda Report but had not yet formulated a policy. The gravamen of the accusation of the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) was that we had been thinking too long. The hon.

Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Mayhew) criticised the policy of the Government in withdrawing the British Council from Australia, New Zealand and Ceylon a stage further, but I have nothing further to say to what I informed him in answer to his intervention.
In answer to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Preston, South may I say that there was no consultation between the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and the Commonwealth Governments concerned, but the Governments were informed of this decision. [An HON. MEMBER: "After it was taken?"] After it was taken. Nor was there any consultation with the Governments of other countries where British Council services would either have to be withdrawn or cut down.

Mr. Mayhew: Mr. Mayhewrose—

Mr. Nutting: I am seeking to reply to the speech of the hon. Gentleman, and I am now coming to another point. He asked whether there was an element of censure of Lord Swinton in the Drogheda Report. I can assure him that there was no censure whatsoever, and I frankly do not know where he gets that idea.
I assure the House that the only parts of the Drogheda Report which were not published are those parts which are confidential or which might give offence to foreign countries where they made public, as, for instance, comparisons of one country with another as being more important. That gives the answer to the hon. Member for Preston and my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. J. Rodgers) who complained about the truncated nature of the Report. It is a very full summary of the full Drogheda Report.
I should like to say a few words about television films, in which the hon. Member for Woolwich, East is interested. The B.B.C. is offering films, and will continue to do so, to the Canadian Broadcasting Company and broadcasting companies in the United States. The scale upon which this is being done at the moment is relatively small, but since December, 1952, 55 tele-recordings and 17 films have been provided for Canada. I have not the comparable figures for the United States, but I am informed that they are being supplied to a large number of television stations there.
The hon. Member for Woolwich, East asked whether Lord Swinton was responsible for sabotaging the big scheme. There was no question of that. The position with regard to the B.B.C. proposal for a £250,000 investment in television films for export abroad is that we are considering the Drogheda Report and what we can do to implement the recommendations where the financial prospects of the country will permit us to do so. Until we have considered the principle and the aims laid down in that Report and whether we can fulfil them, clearly such schemes as this will have to take second place. Once the decision has been taken on the Drogheda Report we shall be in a position to consider individual schemes.
The hon. Member for Preston made certain comments about withdrawing the B.B.C. from Europe. We shall take into account what he and other hon. Members said in this debate. He suggested that I was complacent about the broadcasts of the B.B.C. in comparison with those of

the Soviet Union and the satellite countries. I really was not being complacent about that subject. I admit frankly that Soviet and satellite broadcasts have gone up and ours have gone down, and I admit that that is not a favourable position in which to be, but I was simply trying to cheer up hon. Members opposite by reminding them that broadcasting from the free world, the major countries and Yugoslavia, was still double that from the Soviet and satellite countries put together.

Reference has been made in the debate to the co-ordination field. There has been an awful lot of talk about co-ordinating and planning and so on, but there was precious little action of an effective kind from the party opposite when they were in Government. We have taken action to improve matters in our term of office. We have shown imagination, and for that reason I hope that the House will reject the Motion.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 264; Noes, 280.

Division No. 188.]
AYES
[9.59 p.m.


Acland, Sir Richard
Cove, W. C.
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)


Adams, Richard
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Griffiths, William (Exchange)


Albu, A. H.
Crosland, C. A. R.
Grimond, J.


Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)
Crossman, R. H. S.
Hale, Leslie


Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)
Cullen, Mrs. A.
Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Coins Valley)


Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.
Daines, P.
Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)


Awbery, S. S.
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.
Hamilton, W. W.


Bacon, Miss Alice
Darling, George (Hillsborough)
Hannan, W.


Baird, J.
Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)
Hardy, E. A.


Balfour, A.
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Hargreaves, A.


Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.
Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)
Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)


Bartley, P.
de Freitas, Geoffrey
Hastings, S.


Beattle, J.
Deer, G.
Hayman, F. H.


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Delargy, H. J.
Healey, Denis (Leeds, S.E.)


Bence, C. R.
Dodds, N. N.
Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Rowley Regis)


Benn, Hon. Wedgwood
Donnelly, D. L.
Herbison, Miss M.


Benson, G.
Driberg, T. E. N.
Hewitson, Capt. M.


Beswick, F.
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. John (W. Bromwich)
Hobson, C. R.


Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)
Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.
Holman, P.


Bing, G. H. C.
Edelman, M.
Holmes, Horace


Blackburn, F.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)
Holt, A. F.


Blenkinsop, A.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
Houghton, Douglas


Blyton, W. R.
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)
Hoy, J. H.


Boardman, H.
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Hubbard, T. F.


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A G.
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)
Hudson, James (Ealing N.)


Bowden, H. W.
Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Bowles, F. G.
Fernyhough, E.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)


Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth
Flenburgh, W.
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)


Brockway, A. F.
Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)
Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)


Brook, Dryden (Halifax)
Follick, M.
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Foot, M. M.
Irving, W. J, (Wood Green)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Forman, J. C.
Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.


Brown, Thomas (Ince)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Janner, B.


Burke, W. A.
Freeman John (Watford)
Jeger, George (Goole)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)
Freeman, Peter (Newport)
Jeger, Mrs. Lena


Callaghan, L. J.
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.
Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)


Castle, Mrs. B. A.
Gibson, C. W.
Johnson, James (Rugby)


Champion, A. J.
Glanville, James
Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)


Chetwynd, G. R.
Gooch, E. G.
Jones, David (Hartlepool)


Clunie, J.
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.
Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)


Coldrick, W.
Greenwood, Anthony
Jones, Jack (Rotherham)


Collick, P. H.
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R
Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Grey, C. F.
Keenan, W.




Kenyan, C.
Paget, R. T.
Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)


Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)
Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.


King, Dr. H. M.
Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)
Swingler, S. T.


Kinley, J.
Palmer, A. M. F.
Sylvester, G. O.


Lawsen, G. M.
Pannell, Charles
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Pargiter, G. A.
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Parker, J.
Taylor, Rt. Hon. Robert (Morpeth)


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Parkin, B. T.
Thomas, George (Cardiff)


Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)
Paton, J.
Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)


Lindgren, G. S.
Peart, T. F.
Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)


Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.
Plummer, Sir Leslie
Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)


Logan, D. G.
Popplewell, E.
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


MacColl, J. E.
Porter, G.
Timmons, J.


McGhee, H. G.
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Tomney, F.


McGovern, J.
Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)
Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn


McInnes, J.
Proctor, W. T.
Usborne, H. C.


McKay, John (Wallsend)
Pryde, D. J.
Viant, S P.


McLeavy, F.
Pursey, Cmdr. H.
Wallace, H. W.


Mainwaring, W. H.
Rankin, John
Warbey, W. N.


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Reid, Thomas (Swindon)
Watkins, T. E.


Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Reid, William (Camlachie)
Weitzman, D.


Mann, Mrs. Jean
Rhodes, H.
Wells, Percy (Faversham)


Manuel, A. G.
Richards, R.
Wells, William (Walsall)


Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.
Robens, Rt. Hon. A.
West, D. G.


Mason, Roy
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Wheeldon, W. E.


Mayhew, C. P
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)


Mellish, R. J.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.


Messer, Sir F.
Ross, William
Wigg, George


Mikardo, Ian
Royle, C.
Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.


Mitchison, G. R.
Shackleton, E. A. A.
Wilkins, W. A.


Monslow, W.
Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir Hartley
Willey, F. T.


Moody, A. S.
Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.
Williams, David (Neath)


Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.
Short, E. W.
Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)


Morley, R.
Shurmer, P. L. E.
Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'll'y)


Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)
Silverman, Julius (Erdington)
Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)


Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Lewisham, S.)
Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)
Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, S.)


Mort, D. L.
Skeffington, A. M.
Willis, E. G.


Moyle, A.
Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)
Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)


Mulley, F. W.
Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)
Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)


Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J
Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.


O'Brien, T.
Smith, Norman (Nottingham, S.)
Wyatt, W. L.


Oldfield, W. H.
Sorensen, R. W.
Yates, V. F.


Oliver, G. H.
Soskice, Rt. Hon, Sir Frank
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Orbach, M.
Sparks, J. A.



Oswald, T.
Steele, T.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Padley, W. E.
Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.
Mr. Pearson and




Mr. Arthur Allen.




NOES


Aitken, W. T.
Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.
Duthie, W. S.


Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)
Bullard, D. C.
Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.


Alport, C. J. M.
Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Eden, Rt. Hon. A.


Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)
Burden, F. F. A.
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)


Amory, Rt. Hon. Heathcoat (Tiverton)
Butcher, Sir Herbert
Erroll, F. J.


Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.
Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)
Finlay, Graeme


Arbuthnot, John
Campbell, Sir David
Fisher, Nigel


Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)
Carr, Robert
Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.


Astor, Hon. J. J.
Cary, Sir Robert
Fletcher-Cooke, C.


Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M,
(Shannon, H.
Ford, Mrs. Patricia


Baldwin, A. E.
Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)
Fort, R.


Banks, Col. C.
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)
Foster, John


Barlow, Sir John
Cole, Norman
Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)


Baxter, Sir Beverley
Colegate, W. A.
Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe &amp; Londale)


Beach, Maj. Hicks
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger
Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir David Maxwell


Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)
Cooper, Sqn. Ldr, Albert
Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)


Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)
Cooper-Key, E. M.
Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)


Bennett, F. M. (Reading, N.)
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)
Gammans, L. D.


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Crookshank, Capt. Rt. Hon, H. F. C.
Garner-Evans, E. H.


Bennett, William (Woodside)
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.
George, Rt. Hon. Maj. G. Lloyd


Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)
Crouch, R. F.
Glover, D.


Birch, Nigel
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)
Godber, J. B.


Bishop, F. P.
Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)
Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.


Black, C. W.
Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)
Gough, C. F. H.


Boothby, Sir R. J. G.
Davidson, Viscountess
Gower, H. R.


Bossom, Sir A. C.
Deedes, W. F.
Graham, Sir Fergus


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.
Digby, S. Wingfield
Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)


Boyle, Sir Edward
Dodds-Parker, A. D.
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)


Braine, B. R.
Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.
Hall, John (Wycombe)


Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Doughty, C. J. A.
Harden, J. R. E.


Braithwaite, Sir Gurney
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm
Harris, Frederic (Croylon, N.)


Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.
Drayson, G. B.
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)


Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)
Drewe, Sir C.
Harvey, Air Cmdr. A. V. (Macclesfield)


Brooman-White, R. C.
Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)
Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)


Browne, Jack (Govan)
Duncan, Capt. J. A. L
Harvie-Watt, Sir George







Hay, John
Maclean, Fitzroy
Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.


Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)
Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.


Heath, Edward
MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)
Savory, Prof. Sir Douglas


Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)
Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.


Higgs, J. M. C.
Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)
Scott, R. Donald


Hill, Dr. Charles (Luton)
Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)
Scott-Miller, Comdr. R.


Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)
Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir Reginald
Shepherd, William


Hinchingbrooke, Viscount
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)


Hirst, Geoffrey
Marlowe, A. A. H.
Smithers, Peter (Winchester)


Holland-Martin, C. J
Marples, A. E.
Smithers, Sir Waldron (Orpington)


Hollis, M. C.
Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)
Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)


Hope, Lord John
Maude, Angus
Snadden, W. McN.


Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry
Maudling, R.
Spearman, A. C. M.


Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.
Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.
Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)


Horobin, I. M.
Medlicott, Brig. F.
Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)


Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence
Mellor, Sir John
Stanley, Capt. Hon. Richard


Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)
Molson, A. H. E.
Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)


Howard, Hon. Greville (St, Ives)
Monckton, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter
Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)


Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)
Moore, Sir Thomas
Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.


Hulbert, Wing Cdr. N. J.
Morrison, John (Salisbury)
Storey, S.


Hurd, A. R.
Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.
Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)


Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark (E'b'rgh, W.)
Nabarro, G. D. N.
Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)


Hutchison, James (Scotstoun)
Neave, Airey
Studholme, H. G.


Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.
Nicholls, Harmar
Summers, G. S.


Hylton-Foster, H. B. H
Nield, Basil (Chester)
Sutcliffe, Sir Harold


Iremonger, T. L.
Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Nugent, G. R. H.
Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)


Jennings, Sir Roland
Nutting, Anthony
Teeling, W.


Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Odey, G. W.
Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)


Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)
O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)
Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)


Jones, A. (Hall Green)
Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.
Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)


Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W.
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)


Kaberry, D.
Page, R. G.
Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.


Kerby, Capt. H. B.
Peake, Rt. Hon. O.
Tilney, John


Kerr, H. W.
Peto, Brig. C. H. M.
Touche, Sir Gordon


Lambton, Viscount
Peyton, J. W. W.
Turner, H. F. L.


Langford-Holt, J. A.
Pickthorn, K. W. M.
Turton, R. H.


Leather, E. H. C.
Pilkington, Capt. R. A.
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.
Pitman, I. J.
Vane, W. M. F.


Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)
Pitt, Miss E. M.
Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.


Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.
Powell, J. Enoch
Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)


Lindsay, Martin
Price, Henry (Lewisham, W.)
Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)


Linstead, Sir H. N.
Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Walker-Smith, D. C.


Llewellyn, D. T.
Profumo, J. D.
Wall, Major Patrick


Lloyd. Rt. Hon. G (King's Norton)
Raikes, Sir Victor
Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)


Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Ramsden, J. E.
Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)


Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)
Rayner, Brig. R.
Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.


Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.
Redmayne, M.
Watkinson, H. A.


Longden, Gilbert
Rees-Davies, W. R.
Webbe, Sir H. (London &amp; Westminster)


Low, A. R. W.
Remnant, Hon. P.
Wellwood, W.


Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)
Ronton, D. L. M.
Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)


Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)
Ridsdale, J. E.
Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)


Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Roberts, Peter (Heeley)
Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)


McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.
Robinson, Sir Roland (Blackpool, S.)
Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)


Macdonald, Sir Peter
Robson-Brown, W.
Wills, G.


Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry
Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


McKibbin, A. J.
Roper, Sir Harold
Wood, Hon. R.


Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)
Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard



Maclay, Rt. Hon. John
Russell, R. S.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:




Mr. Vosper and Mr. Oakshott.

IRISH CARS (SMUGGLING)

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Studholme.]

10.9 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell: The subject I wish to raise is the smuggling of cars from the Republic of Ireland. I wish to make it plain at the outset that I make no complaint whatever against the Irish Government. In fact, there is nothing in this case which affects them in the least. In any event, the smuggling to which I am going to refer—or the after-effects of the smuggling, which is what I am complaining about—took place more than a year ago.
The core of the problem is this. In May, 1953, 24 cars were imported into this country from the Republic of Ireland via Belfast and Liverpool. They were sold by the persons importing them to certain dealers in this country, mostly in the London area, some of whom were my constituents. Before they completed the deal, my constituents took very great pains to find out if the cars had been cleared by the Customs, and they received several assurances which suggested that they had.
Three months later, when the Customs found that the cars had been smuggled, they promptly impounded them, and only released them on payment of the duty and the Purchase Tax. By that time, some of the cars had been resold, and the duty and the Purchase Tax had to be paid, not by the people who had imported them, but by my constituents and other dealers who bought them from these people, and by some of the persons to whom they had subsequently sold them. Therefore, these people have all been penalised very unjustly and have suffered a substantial financial loss through no fault of their own, and, in the case of the dealers, their reputation was also placed in jeopardy.
May I now go into detail and take the case of one constituent of mine? On 30th May, 1953, Mr. Ketteringham agreed to buy a car from two men named Johnson and Dempsey whom he had never met before. Knowing that cars

which had been imported from the Irish Republic were subject to the payment of the duty and tax, he asked the police to check on the cars, and the police informed him that everything was in order. I know that the police have no responsibility in these matters, but were merely passing on information which they themselves had obtained, and that, whether it was right or wrong, no blame attaches to them.
They gave him the name of a Customs official with a Mansion House telephone number in order that he could double-check on the cars himself. That official told him that, provided that the cars had a United Kingdom registration book issued by a licensing authority in this country, they were clear of Customs Duty. One of the cars had such a book and the other had not, so Mr. Ketteringham completed the deal in respect of the one which had a registration book, which was issued by the Middlesex County Council, and did not do so in regard to the other car. That proved that he was trying to do all he could to keep within the law and avoid buying a car which had been illegally imported.
Mr. Ketteringham also wrote and telephoned the Customs in Liverpool, and the gist of the telephone conversation was this: "What are you worried about? How do you think you got the cars at all if they had not been cleared of duty?" In the letter which he received, in reply to his own letter, from the Assistant Collector of Customs at Liverpool, was this statement:
I have to enclose a copy of Notice No. 115 which explains that goods released against an undertaking without payment of duty and Purchase Tax, or conditionally, are liable to forfeiture. Normally, cars covered by a registration book issued by a U.K. licensing authority, such as the Middlesex County Council, are outside the scope of this notice unless the book is endorsed to the contrary.
Mr. Ketteringham took that to mean that, if a car had been issued with a United Kingdom registration book, it was in order and clear of duty, and, when I myself read the letter, I took it to mean exactly the same thing. However, not being as certain of legal phraseology as some of my hon. Friends, I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) whether he took the same view, and my hon. Friend,


with much greater legal knowledge than I possess, tells me that he does. Further, the Middlesex County Council also assured Mr. Ketteringham on the telephone that, if the registration book had been issued by them, he could buy the car with confidence. Subsequently, he bought eight cars from this man and other dealers bought other cars, making 24 in all from four men. The cars were seized and the duty and the Purchase Tax were charged to Mr. Ketteringham and other dealers and owners of the cars at the time.
The first point is that Mr. Ketteringham and the other dealers were very badly let down by the assurances given by the Customs which, to my mind, clearly mean that, provided the cars were issued with a registration book by a United Kingdom licensing authority and not endorsed, the cars were clear of duty. Secondly, surely the Customs in this country, when asked by the dealers to check on these cars, could find out from the Customs authorities in Northern Ireland whether the cars had been legally imported.
Of course, they were imported from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland by being driven across the land frontier. I assume that a record is kept by the Customs houses on that land frontier of all cars brought from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland legally. Therefore, if the numbers of the cars were given to the Customs in this country surely they could check with Northern Ireland to find out whether the cars had been imported by that land frontier. If there is no record, presumably they had been smuggled over by some by-road or when the Customs were not on duty. There seems to be a lack of liaison between the Customs in this country and in Northern Ireland.
Then there is the question of the duty and the Purchase Tax. Most of these cars were of British manufacture and were secondhand. One, I know, was a Jaguar of 1939 manufacture and another was a Standard of the same year. I am rather puzzled why British manufactured cars should be subject to Import Duty on reimportation into this country from the Irish Republic or anywhere else. I thought that the purpose of the Import Duties Act was to protect British cars

against foreign competition. Surely, therefore, there is no objection to the reimportation of these cars which were originally exported.
Another point is whether secondhand cars, especially those of 1939, are subject to Purchase Tax. Purchase Tax had not been introduced in 1939, the year of manufacture of at least two of the cars. In any event, I thought that all secondhand goods were exempt. I am puzzled to know why it was necessary to seize the cars at all and to charge duty and Purchase Tax on them. I wonder if the Minister can give details of the duty and the Purchase Tax charged, and why.
Another question is whether it is possible, when the wrong persons are penalised in a case like this, to charge only a nominal rate of duty. I should also like to know what the rate of duty is and on what value of car—whether it is the original new value or whether it is the secondhand value as valued by the Customs when the cars were impounded. Also, have all the persons who smuggled these cars from the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland been arrested? I know that three were arrested. I wonder whether the fourth has since been arrested.
I was rather surprised to find from a report, I think in the "Belfast Telegraph" about last August, that the fines imposed on three of the men did not seem to bear any relation to the amount of duty charged by the Customs. I think that it is true that on cars smuggled by three of the men the total duty amounted to about £2,000. One of the men was fined about £500 and was given the option of 10 months' imprisonment; and he took the imprisonment. I have always understood that the penalty for smuggling or evasion of duty is very severe indeed and can even be twice or three times the amount of duty involved.
Surely it is desirable that steps should be taken to make sure that licences are not issued by licensing authorities in the United Kingdom unless proof is forthcoming that duty has been paid. In this case the wrong people seem to have been penalised, which is very unjust in any case, and particularly so as they took great pains to find out whether the cars were cleared of Customs Duty.
In Notice No. 115, to which I referred in a letter which I quoted just now, there are these words:
Warning to buyers. Dealers and other persons buying imported goods otherwise than through recognised commercial channels are advised in their own interest to satisfy themselves, before concluding the purchase, that the goods are free from Customs restrictions and are not liable to be confiscated if sold.
That is exactly what the dealers did. They took great pains to find this out for themselves. It seems to me that the only authorities who could have told them were the Customs and that the Customs lamentably failed to find out and to warn the dealers that the cars had been stolen.
To sum up, why was a misleading letter sent by the Customs which gave the impression that everything was in order when it was not? Secondly, should either duty or Purchase Tax have been charged at all on these second-hand British-made cars? Thirdly, what steps have been taken to ensure that this kind of mistake cannot recur?

10.21 p.m.

Mr. J. Beattie: I am very pleased that the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) has raised the question of the smuggling of cars. He grades the cars as secondhand. I wonder whether it will be news to him to know that the same Customs and the same regulations operate on the border between the Six Counties and the Twenty Six Counties, in the case of cars. It might also be news to him to know that I can buy a secondhand car in Dublin and have no difficulty in bringing it across the border and carrying on my private business with it. I presume that the regulation which allows me to do that is a British regulation made by the Minister in charge of Customs.
I regretted hearing the complaint about Belfast traders smuggling secondhand cars. The Belfast motor traders are as honest men as one will find in the motor business in any country. I can assure the hon. Member that the secondhand motor car dealers in Northern Ireland have no cause or desire to participate in the smuggling about which he has complained.

Mr. Russell: I did not suggest that Belfast dealers were concerned. They were not Belfast dealers at all.

Mr. Beattie: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Belfast dealers. I represent the heart of Belfast and there are large numbers of motor car dealers in my constituency. I know those dealers, and I know that they have no cause to engage in smuggling. They are able to buy secondhand cars in the Republic of Ireland and bring them to the North of Ireland. If any reflection is cast upon the British Customs authorities I am greatly surprised, because I have heard it stated in this House by the Minister concerned that they are the most highly efficient body of men that there could be on the border between this country and any other country.
I am sorry to bear from the hon. Member about the surcharging. If one wants a good secondhand car brought from the Republic one is at liberty to buy it in Belfast and bring it to the British Isles. That was the understanding so far as Northern Ireland was concerned, and I hope that it is not changed.

10.25 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I do not think that the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Beattie) will expect me to follow him in the advice which he has given to my hon. Friends. If I may I will, having reserved my position on that advice, confine myself to answering the very large number of points which my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) succeeded in compressing into a very limited space of time.
First, however, let me deal with the background. I will come to the court proceedings in a moment, but there is no doubt at all that the cars in question were smuggled. I am advised that it is equally the law in this country that smuggled goods are subject to seizure. In this case, in view of all the circumstances—and I would like the House to know this—the right of seizure was not insisted on; although, in law, it would have been possible for all these cars to have been seized and sold by the Customs and Excise. In fact, the seizure was waived and all that was insisted on was the payment of the Purchase Tax and import duties due. I think it is fair, when considering this matter, to bear that fact in mind.
I do not in general, although in one or two points, quarrel with the description


of the somewhat complicated circumstances of this rather unusual case quoted by my hon. Friend. I join issue with him when he says that assurances were given by the Customs and Excise that these were not smuggled goods. I have not been able to find, either in the very clear and forceful representations made to me by my hon. Friend, or from my own inquiries, any justification for that statement.
My hon. Friend referred to a letter from the assistant collector at Liverpool, but I think that he will agree that that letter was attached to and related to a Customs notice regarding a totally different matter; that of the use of cars imported without payment of duty into this country legally in certain circumstances, for example, by tourists. The notice sent with the letter related to that, and if one reads the letter in that connection, and also the statement that normally cars registered in this country do not come within the terms of that notice, one will appreciate that what was intended to be conveyed related to a totally different context than that of admittedly smuggled vehicles.
If the matter was misunderstood—and I accept the statement of my hon. Friend that it was—I do not think that in the context there was reasonable grounds for misunderstanding. Of course, I appreciate that the official forms and notices are not always as easily comprehensible by traders as sometimes one could hope. There are a great many of these forms but no assurance—and I think this is important—was given that these cars could be regarded as being cars on which duty had been paid.

Mr. Beresford Craddock: I do not agree with that. I have gone over these documents, and the notice says that where a purchaser is in doubt that the car is clear of the Customs, the Customs themselves say that normally, in view of a licence having been issued by a British authority, it is all right. If that does not mean that this case is perfectly in order I am inclined to say, with respect, that words seem to have lost their meaning.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The words are in a totally different context, but I cannot devote any more time to this matter if I am to answer the other questions which

were raised. This related to the legal use of cars on which duty had not been paid, as my hon. Friend will see, and not, of course, to smuggled cars at all.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South asked why duty was payable at all in view of the fact that these were British cars. The cars confiscated did not include the 1939 Jaguar to which my hon. Friend referred. They are all of post-1940 manufacture; I have the schedule here.
These cars were exported to Ireland in separate parts. The technical term in the motor trade is C.K.D.—completely knocked down, a technical term rather reminiscent of the boxing ring. The import duty was assessed on the basis not of those parts which, as my hon. Friend rightly says, were of United Kingdom origin but on the basis of the car as a whole, due allowance being made for the fact that a large number of the parts were of United Kingdom manufacture. In fact, the import duty was not very severe.
My hon. Friend asked how the Purchase Tax is assessed on these vehicles. It is assessed on their current value at the time of the importation—not, therefore, on the value which they would have had as new cars but on a low, secondhand value. Relating, as it does, to British cars manufactured since 1940, I am afraid it is legally due.
My hon. Friend asks why the ultimate purchaser should be penalised. Apart from the fact that in law the 'ultimate purchaser could have been much more severely penalised by having the car seized, it should not at this stage be assumed that the ultimate purchaser will necessarily be penalised. As I understand the legal position, it is that a purchaser who purchased a car, as I understand these purchasers did, at a price which would be consistent with the duty and tax having been paid on it, has a remedy in law against the dealer from whom it was purchased. If he is found liable, the dealer has a remedy—at least, this is reasonable to assume—on the contract against the person who supplied him, the smugglers; and I will come, if I may, to the smugglers.
One of them, who I understand is the ring leader, has not been before a court because, although a warrant has been issued, he is resident in Dublin and is


therefore, not within the jurisdiction of the courts of the United Kingdom. It would no doubt be quite possible, if a cause of action lay, to proceed in the civil courts against him, in the courts of the Republic of Ireland. Until at least the question of these mutual, complicated legal rights has been resolved, I do not think it is fair to say that the ultimate purchaser has been penalised. It is now a matter of the legal rights of a number of individuals involved in a somewhat complicated transaction, as between themselves.
My hon. Friend asked about the conviction of the other three people before the resident magistrate in Belfast. I understand that it would be completely out of order if I were to comment on the sentences which the resident magistrate, in his discretion and wisdom, imposed. My hon. Friend asked me to do so, but I do not think that would be proper.
I can tell the House what the sentences were. The first of the smugglers, a man called Dempsey, was fined £500 with an alternative of 10 months' imprisonment. He did not pay the fine and went to prison for 10 months. The second, a Mr. Mullen, was fined £300 with an alternative of 12 months' imprisonment. He did not pay the fine and went to prison for 12 months. The third, a Mr. Clifford, suffered a penalty of £150 with an alternative of three months' imprisonment. Equally, he did not pay the fine, and he went to prison.
To complete the picture, although a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the ringleader, at the moment he is in Dublin, and it has not been possible to exercise the warrant. I am sure my hon. Friend will appreciate that it would be wrong for me to comment on the level of the sentences imposed by the resident magistrate, who no doubt discharged his duty on the facts and the evidence of the case, which are not in detail before the House, in accordance with the proper standard.
My hon. Friend then asked about the question of the Middlesex County Council issuing a registration book, and he stated that the council had given some assurances in the matter. I am not, of course, in a position to answer for the Middlesex County Council. The question, however, has been considered from

time to time as to whether registration of motor cars should be tied up in some way to protect the innocent purchaser, not only in respect of smuggled, but also of stolen goods.
A good deal of thought has been given to that aspect of the matter, but the view so far taken has been that it is not possible to put on to local authorities the very considerable amount of work that would be involved. Therefore, the registration book cannot be taken as evidence either that duty has been paid, or, indeed, that the vehicle is not a stolen one.
There is an interesting argument as to whether we should not extend that liability, but I have neither the time nor the opportunity this evening to develop it. Certainly the view so far taken is that it would not be reasonable to expect local authorities to undertake these obligations.
My hon. Friend asked about the Northern Ireland land frontier, to which the hon. Member for Belfast, West also made reference. There seems to be no doubt at all that the cars in question were brought over by night on side roads across the frontier. The frontier is very nearly 200 miles in length, and it is obvious that, from time to time, successful smuggling can take place across it. It is, therefore, all the more necessary for the House to remember in those circumstances that it is possible—and has been proved possible in this case—to catch up with the smuggled property at a later stage.
It would clearly be more satisfactory to all concerned if interception could be effected, as it may well be in many cases, on the frontier itself, but the Northern Ireland land frontier, as the hon. Member for Belfast, West well knows, has its complications from this point of view. It is, I think, perfectly clear that these vehicles were driven across the frontier by night on side roads.
I do not want to go into details as to the precautions taken because there may well be people outside this House interested to learn a certain amount about them, and I am not sure that it would be healthy for them to be supplied with gratuitous information on the point. I would only add that this case has drawn attention to the dangers of smuggling of this sort, and it may well be—I will not go further—that it might prove more


difficult for anybody who desired to repeat this tiresome and unhappy performance.
As I say, my hon. Friend has described the case as it stands at the moment with great clarity, and one cannot help feeling sympathy for a considerable number of the people involved in the difficulties which the wrongdoing of the original smugglers has created. But, as I said, the mutual legal rights of the different parties have not yet been clarified, and, therefore, we cannot presume that wholly innocent persons will find themselves penalised.
However, it is important that it should be appreciated that smuggled goods can

be under the law, and generally are, seized when found in this country. Indeed, that fact is one of the greatest protections of our whole system of protection that exists, and it cannot be too widely appreciated what are the very real dangers that arise from dealing in goods which have been brought unlawfully and improperly into this country without the payment of duty.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'Clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Twenty-One Minutes to Eleven o'Clock.